Odoo Website Module – Overview and Architecture

What is the Website Module?

The website module (odoo/addons/website/) turns Odoo into a CMS. It provides:

• Page editor — drag-and-drop building blocks (snippets) for non-developers
• Website-aware routes — controllers can be restricted to a specific website instance
• SEO management — per-page title, description, sitemap inclusion, structured data
• Multi-website — run multiple websites from one Odoo instance with different domains
• ir.website — the database model representing a website instance

Unlike the portal (/my/), website pages are publicly accessible at /. You build public-facing marketing and product pages here, not authenticated customer areas.

The ir.website Model

ir.website stores configuration for each website: domain, language, default language, favicon, header/footer theme, and social media links. From Python you access the current website via request.website:

from odoo import http
from odoo.http import request

class MyController(http.Controller):

    @http.route('/about', type='http', auth='public', website=True)
    def about_page(self, **kw):
        website = request.website          # ir.website record
        company = website.company_id       # linked res.company
        return request.render('my_module.about_page_template', {
            'website': website,
            'company': company,
        })

The website=True parameter on @http.route is what activates website context — it makes request.website available and enables multi-website routing.

Website vs Portal

Multi-Website Architecture

One Odoo instance can host multiple websites (e.g., brand-a.com and brand-b.com) simultaneously. Each website has its own ir.website record. Routes with website=True are automatically scoped to the current website by matching request.httprequest.environ['HTTP_HOST'] against the website's domain.

To restrict a page to a specific website, use request.website.id as a domain filter in your controllers:

products = request.env['product.template'].search([
    ('website_id', 'in', [False, request.website.id]),
    ('website_published', '=', True),
])

Records with website_id = False are visible on all websites. Records with a specific website_id are only visible on that website.

SEO Metadata – website.seo.metadata

Add the website.seo.metadata mixin to your model to get built-in SEO fields managed from the backend or the website editor:

class LibraryBook(models.Model):
    _name = 'library.book'
    _inherit = ['website.seo.metadata', 'website.published.mixin']
    _description = 'Library Book'

    name = fields.Char(string='Title', required=True)
    author = fields.Char(string='Author')
    description = fields.Html(string='Description')

The website.seo.metadata mixin adds: website_meta_title, website_meta_description, website_meta_keywords, and website_meta_og_img fields. These are editable in the website editor's SEO panel.

The website.published.mixin adds is_published and website_published fields plus publish/unpublish actions.

Website Module Ecosystem

Several Odoo apps build directly on the website module:

Each of these follows the same pattern: website=True routes, QWeb templates inheriting from website.layout, and models that mix in website.seo.metadata.