Audiences are used to manage hosting multiple brands or stores out of the same database. While Roles and Permissions control "who can see what", audiences are a hard filter. A user with Admin permissions will still not be able to see content that is not allowed in the current audience. The typical implementation of audiences for a multi-brand/multi-store environment follows the following process:
- Create an Enterprise URL for management
- Create a site setting for that URL at System Management>Site Settings
- Leave the audience blank so the site has access to all items regardless of which brand/store they are in
- This site should not be publicly available or should have robots.txt set to disallow search indexing
- *** Note - If you do not setup a URL without an audience you will struggle with page and item maintenance since audiences affect ALL screens including item maintenance and Web Manager.
- Create an audience for each brand at System Management>System Audiences
- Assign the appropriate audience(s) to each web category and item
- Create a URL for each brand/store
- Create a site setting for that URL at System Management>Site Settings
- Assign the audience at System Management>Site Settings>Main Settings>Audience