Can I use cross site publishing on author sites that are not site collections?

Question

I have multiple sites that publish data that I need to be collected to one site (n:1). But the "n" author sites are not site collections so I cannot "turn on" the cross-site publishing feature on those sites.

Is there any other way to do this?

Answer 1

Unfortunately No! the publishing content sites should be site collections.

Note:

• In a cross-site collection publishing scenario, you must have at least two site collections, one for authoring content and one for publishing content.
• Use the Product Catalog Site Collection template to create authoring site collections because the Cross-Site Collection Publishing feature is activated by default.
• To activate the Cross-Site Collection Publishing feature , the user must be a site collection administrator on the authoring site collection.