Introduction to Site Plugins¶
Site Plugins are a way to plug in customized content and experiences into your dealership websites. With Site Plugins you can use a variety of contextual information to decide what content to show where in an automated fashion.
Terminology¶
Site Plugins are made of a few parts, each listed below:
Ad Server¶
The Ad Server is a back end service that decides what content to deliver for a given request for content. The request can include a variety of contextual information -- location on the page, IP, user ID, keywords, ad size and more. The back end can also take into account any context provided directly to it -- sponsored vehicles, current specials, a user's viewed vehicles and more.
The Ad Server is outside the scope of this section, but you can check out more details over on the Ad Server docs.
Site Plugins¶
A Site Plugin is a specific set of components that decide how to render content onto dealership websites. The components contained include renderers, styles, extensions and configuration. Site Plugins can only be loaded inside of placements, and generally use Orbee's Ad Server to get related content to render.
Placements¶
A placement is an orb element placed
on the website that Site Plugins can be loaded in to. Often these
placements include a placement id that can have the Web SDK fetch the site
plugin components dynamically at runtime.
Ways Site Plugins can be used¶
Site plugins also have a variety of ways they can be used on the website, and can create a variety of methods for you to accomplish the dynamic content you are looking for.
Applicable Content¶
Content can be applied to site plugins in three ways:
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Statically: Static content is an image or HTML that requires no JavaScript to run. This content can be loaded directly from the Ad Server.
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Native Content: Native content requires a JSON payload that is interpreted and standardized throughout the Web SDK and Orbee's Marketing Cloud. Such objects include specials, vehicles, customers and more. This content usually requires a renderer that supports that native content so that it gets rendered on the website.
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Third-Party Content: Third-Party content is the most dynamic of the three; its a payload that can load HTML, CSS and JavaScript anywhere it wants within the placement. Third-Party content is only allowed in the Web SDK by approved third-party vendors.
Desired Site Plugin¶
The specific Site Plugin loaded into a placement can also be loaded in two different ways:
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Statically: A placement can be configured to statically load a specific Site Plugin into itself. Based on the content request, the Site Plugin either loads or not.
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Dynamically: A placement can also be configured to dynamically load a variety of site plugins into itself. This requires a first request to determine the site plugin to render, then a second request for the content to deliver to the site plugin.