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Turn on Digital Experiences and publish your first site

Nothing exists until you enable the feature and choose a domain, and both are org-wide decisions you make exactly once.

Steps
5
Steps
Level
Beginner
Level
Category
Platform
Category
By Dipojjal Chakrabarti · Founder & Editor, Salesforce DictionaryLast updated Aug 22, 2026

Nothing exists until you enable the feature and choose a domain, and both are org-wide decisions you make exactly once.

  1. Enable Digital Experiences

    From Setup, enter Digital Experiences in the Quick Find box, select Settings, and enable it. You are asked for a domain name for the org here, and it prefixes every site URL you publish from then on.

  2. Create the site from a template

    Open All Sites, select New, and pick a template. Customer Service and Partner Central arrive preloaded with pages for self-service and channel sales. Build Your Own (LWR) starts close to empty and expects developers.

  3. Set up access before you design anything

    Decide whether the site allows guest access, attach profiles and permission sets to your external users, then configure sharing sets or roles. Doing this first means every page you build is tested against realistic permissions.

  4. Build the pages in Experience Builder

    Arrange components, apply a branding set, and add audiences if different groups need different content. Preview as a specific user instead of trusting how the builder canvas looks to you.

  5. Publish, then check it as an outsider

    Publishing is what makes changes live. Afterwards open the site URL in a private window with no session, so you see precisely what the guest user sees.

Domain nameremember

Org-wide and set at enablement. It prefixes the URL of every site you publish, so use the company name rather than a project codename.

Template familyremember

Aura templates such as Customer Service accept Aura and Lightning web components. LWR templates accept Lightning web components only and load faster.

Guest accessremember

A site can allow public pages, require a login, or do both on different pages. This decides which profile deserves your audit time.

Gotchas
  • The org domain name is chosen once at enablement and is not something you rename casually later, so keep project codenames out of it.
  • Testing while signed in as an admin hides almost every permission problem, because your internal access follows you into the site.

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