Spinning up a Community Application means enabling Digital Experiences for the org, picking a template, configuring access for the right license type, and activating the site under a domain. The order matters because Digital Experiences is a one-way org setting that you cannot revert later.
- Enable Digital Experiences
In Setup, go to Digital Experiences, then Settings, then check Enable Digital Experiences and pick a domain prefix. The prefix becomes the URL prefix for every site and cannot be changed once set, so coordinate with marketing before you commit.
- Create the site from a template
Setup, Digital Experiences, All Sites, New. Pick LWR for any net-new build unless you have a specific need for an Aura-only component. Name the site and assign the URL path that follows the domain prefix.
- Provision external user licenses
Buy the right license count (Customer Community, Customer Community Plus, Partner Community, or Login-based) through your account executive. Login-based licenses bill per login per month and suit infrequent users; member-based licenses bill per active user and suit daily users.
- Configure profile and permission sets
Clone a standard external profile such as Customer Community User and tighten or expand object access. Create permission sets for any add-on capabilities. Assign profiles to Contacts when you enable them as Community users.
- Set up Sharing Sets and Share Groups
For Customer Community access patterns, configure Sharing Sets to grant record access via the Account or Contact relationship. Add internal users to Share Groups so they can see records owned by external high-volume users.
- Build pages in Experience Builder
Open the site in Experience Builder. Configure the theme, set the navigation menu, drop components on each page, and configure audiences if different visitor groups should see different layouts.
- Activate the site
From the Administration workspace, click Activate. The site goes live at its configured URL. Test from an external user account in incognito. Do not test as an internal admin viewing as, since that bypasses several sharing rules.
- Digital Experiences cannot be disabled once enabled. Test the impact in a sandbox first.
- The domain prefix is one-way and applies to every site in the org. Coordinate with marketing before locking it in.
- Customer Community license users cannot use role hierarchy or sharing rules. If you need either, switch the license tier to Customer Community Plus before users are provisioned.
- Sharing Sets only grant access. They cannot remove access already granted by other mechanisms.
- LWR sites cache aggressively. Records updated on the org may take minutes to reflect on the site unless you invalidate cache or call non-cacheable Apex.