Create websites

The XM Cloud Dashboard is where you create and manage your websites and access all your XM Cloud Tools.

Create a website

To create a website:

  1. Access your organization's Dashboard. You can do this in two ways:

    • In your XM Cloud Portal, click the environment you want to create your website in. Then, in the right-hand pane, click Open.

    • In any XM Cloud app, click Home .

  2. In XM Cloud Dashboard, click Create website.

  3. In the New site dialog, click the template you want to use. XM Cloud Dashboard comes with the following templates:

    • Empty site – this template includes a Home page containing three empty placeholders and a Presentation folder for styling.

    • Basic site – like the empty site, this template includes a Home page and a Presentation folder. However, in this case, the Home page comes with an About page, and both Home and About pages include components and data sources.

    You can create additional site templates in XM Cloud Content Editor.

  4. In the Configure dialog, enter the name of the website, and select the website’s language from the drop-down menu.

    Note

    Additional languages can be added to the drop-down menu in XM Cloud Content Editor.

  5. Optionally, you can assign a site identifier to the website.

    • You can choose a previously created site identifier from the drop-down list.

    • You can create a site identifier using the Create button.

  6. Click Create website.

The new website is now available in XM Cloud Dashboard, on the Sites tab.

Using the Tiles view, you can use the Actions menu to open the website in XM Cloud Pages or XM Cloud Explorer, where you can work on page layout and content. You can also access the site-specific settings, such as site identifiers and environment variables that can be used by developers to configure the environment. You can also rename, duplicate, or delete the site.

Using the Columns view, you can open the content item or page of your choice. For the latter, click Design to open the page in XM Cloud Pages.

Screenshot of the Dashboard Sites in Columns view.

Duplicate a website

Duplicating a site means that all pages of the site are cloned, including images, content, and links existing in these pages.

A duplicated site operates exactly the same as the original, except for the domain name. This can be convenient when you want to create a copy of your website to test modifications, create a live backup of your site, or deliver your site across different environments.

Note

The same site identifier is assigned to the duplicated site, but it can be changed afterward if needed in XM Cloud Dashboard, on the Settings tab.

To duplicate a website:

  1. In XM Cloud Dashboard, in the Tiles view, click to open the Actions menu. Alternatively, in the Columns view, click More to open the same menu.

  2. Click Duplicate.

By default, the duplicated site appears under the same site collection as the source site.

Publish a website

To make your website available publicly, it needs to be published. Publishing a website means that the pages of the site and their related content items are available on Experience Edge, where they can be consumed and rendered by your front-end application.

Note

Some components use mapped data that is fetched from the component to a specified data source. In this case, the data source does not need to be saved on Experience Edge, and it therefore you do not need to publish it.

To publish a website:

  1. In XM Cloud Dashboard, on the Tools tab, click Explorer.

  2. In XM Cloud Explorer, click the Site tile corresponding to the site you want to publish.

  3. In the right-hand editor pane, click Publish.

    If your site is configured to have a publication workflow, you need to approve the different states of the workflow before the Publish button becomes available.

The site is now saved on Experience Edge and a rendering host can retrieve it to make it publicly available.

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