The Blueprint and Live Copy structure is the core AEM feature for multi-site management. It allows you to define a global master (Blueprint) that propagates content and structure to regional Live Copies. Regional teams can then localize specific content while inheriting locked global brand elements, ensuring both consistency and local relevance efficiently.

This is a fundamental AEM concept. A Template defines the skeletal structure of a page (e.g., a two-column layout) and acts as a policy, dictating which components authors are allowed to add to its predefined areas (parsys). Components are the actual building blocks (e.g., Title, Text, Image, Carousel) that authors drag and drop into those allowed areas to create content.

In AEM, content must be explicitly activated (replicated) from the author environment to the publish environment to become live. The most common reason for content not appearing on production is that the activation workflow was not completed. Checking the activation status in the author environment’s Sites console or replication logs is the logical first troubleshooting step.

AEM best practices promote a separation of concerns. Business logic (like fetching data from an external system) should be encapsulated in a Sling Model or a backing Java service. This keeps the presentation layer (HTL) clean, makes the logic reusable, simplifies unit testing, and aligns with AEM’s modern development patterns. It also allows for better caching strategies.

The AEM Style System allows authors to apply visual variations (styles) to components without creating new component versions. A developer pre-defines CSS classes as styles in the component’s policy. The author can then select these styles (e.g., ‘Light Background’, ‘Compact’) from a dropdown in the component’s toolbar, enabling flexible, brand-controlled visual changes.

For straightforward hierarchical organization that maps directly to permissions (using AEM’s CUGs or standard ACLs), a clear folder structure (e.g., /content/we-retail/us/en/news/sports, /content/we-retail/us/en/news/tech) is often the most practical. It’s intuitive for authors, easy to navigate in the Sites console, and permissions can be applied at the folder level, granting the ‘Sports’ lead editor access only to the /sports subtree.

A key Cloud Service principle is immutability. You cannot directly modify a running cloud instance. Instead, you build and submit your entire codebase (and configurations) as a single artifact via Cloud Manager. To ‘roll back,’ you deploy a previous version of this artifact. This promotes consistency, reproducibility, and aligns with modern CI/CD practices.

AEM’s built-in scheduling functionality is designed for this exact scenario. On the author instance, you can set both a ‘On Time’ (activation) and an ‘Off Time’ (deactivation) for a page. The system will automatically publish the page at the start time and unpublish/delete it from the publish environment at the end time, requiring no manual intervention and minimizing human error.

A thorough content audit is the foundational step for any migration. You must understand what you’re moving: volume, content types, structure, metadata, quality (what to keep, update, or archive), and relationships. This audit directly informs the information architecture in AEM (templates, components, taxonomies) and the design of the migration tools/scripts, preventing costly rework later.

The Blueprint and Live Copy structure is the core AEM feature for multi-site management. It allows you to define a global master (Blueprint) that propagates content and structure to regional Live Copies. Regional teams can then localize specific content while inheriting locked global brand elements, ensuring both consistency and local relevance efficiently.0