This section explains the underlying concepts used to configure sites using the [Site Management API](🔗).

## Concepts

Definitions of concepts related to site configuration.

Bloomreach Content's delivery framework uses a number of concepts to enable flexible multi-channel delivery of content.

### Site configuration

A _site configuration_ is a collection of configuration items required to deliver a site. Configuration items include but are not limited to routes, layouts, components, etc.

### Site

A _site_ binds a site configuration to a content root in the repository. Different sites can use the same site configuration with different content roots, for example in the case of translated sites.

### Channel

A _channel_ is a site that can be managed through the Experience manager.

### Page

A _page_ is rendered by a front-end application based on the layout and content mapped to a URL by a route.

### Document-driven page

_Document-driven pages_ share a single layout that acts as a template to dynamically present all the different documents of the same content type.

### Experience page

An _Experience page_ is a page which has both its content and page layout configuration embedded, enabling the page to flow through the publication workflow as a single, self-contained unit.

### Layout

A _layout_ is a configuration of containers and components into a hierarchy.

### Component

A _component_ is a single unit in the hierarchy that makes up a layout. It typically has a single purpose such as retrieving one or more content items, executing a search query, or delegating to child components in the hierarchy.

### Page-specific component

A _page-specific component_ has embedded content and is therefore completely self-contained.

When adding a page-specific component to an experience page, the lifecycle of the component is tied to that page. A page-specific component's configuration as well as its embedded content get published along with the page it is on.

### Shared component

A _shared component_ may reference one or more separate documents in its configuration to pull content from.

A document has its own lifecycle, independent from any page or component it may be referenced from. The component's configuration gets published along with the page it is on but any document referenced from that configuration must be published separately.

### Component group

A _component group_ contains components that can be added to a container by site editors in the Experience manager.

### Container

A _container_ is a placeholder in a layout for one or more component instances added and configured by site editors in the Experience manager.

### Route

A _route_ binds a URL or URL range to a layout and, optionally, to a content path relative to the content root defined for the site.

### Menu

A menu is a hierarchical navigation structure, binding menu items to URLs defined by routes.