sitecore multisite setup

Question

I created site A successfully in sitecore and has deployed to production, now I want to add another site B to the same sitecore instance. I am aware of how to do this, but I am not sure how I can separate the two sites' code (layouts, controls etc.) so that one is not truly dependent on other. Instead of combining both the sites in the same site A project in visual studio, I was wondering if I can create a new project for site B but still reuse sitecore files that are in site A's project? What I am trying to understand really is the best practices in architecting multisite solutions in sitecore. Any ideas? Note: site A and site B are totally different in every aspect except the fact that they need to run on same sitecore instance.

Answer 1

I recommend you separate each site's assets into folders on the file system:

/Website/
/Website/sites/
/Website/sites/SiteA  (<-- specific to SiteA)
/Website/sites/SiteB  (<-- specific to SiteA)
/Website/sites/Common (<-- shared across any sites)

In Sitecore, do the same for your presentation components.

- layouts
  - SiteA
  - SiteB
  - Common
  - Sublayouts
    - SiteA
    - SiteB
    - Common

And the same for templates:

Templates
  User Defined
    SiteA
    SiteB
    Common

Separate out C# class libraries too so they're specific to each site and have a common project for hared code (e.g. utility code for any site, extension methods, helper classes, etc). Visual Studio solution:

- WebApp
- SiteALib  (<- SiteA specific code)
- SiteBLib  (<- SiteB specific code)
- CommonLib (<- reusable code for any site)

As for the sites in the content tree, separate them out too at the same level:

sitecore
  content
    SiteA  (<-- root item for SiteA)
      home (<-- start item for SiteA)
    SiteB  (<-- root item for SiteB)
      home (<-- start item for SiteB)