All Sites
All Sites is the Setup page in Salesforce Experience Cloud that lists every Experience Cloud site (formerly called a Community) configured in the org.
Definition
All Sites is the Setup page in Salesforce Experience Cloud that lists every Experience Cloud site (formerly called a Community) configured in the org. The page is the entry point to Experience Builder, Workspaces, the URL configuration, and the activation toggle for every site. Admins land on All Sites to create a new Experience site, edit the navigation and theme of an existing one, manage member access, or take a site offline for maintenance. It is to Experience Cloud what the App Manager is to internal Lightning apps: the single starting point for site-level work.
The page lives under Setup, Digital Experiences, All Sites. Older orgs may still see the navigation labelled Communities depending on when the rebrand from Salesforce Communities to Experience Cloud was applied. Each row on the page shows the site's name, status (Active or Inactive), URL, and the template the site is built on (Customer Service, Partner Central, Build Your Own LWR, Help Center, and so on). The Workspaces link beside each row opens the per-site dashboard for content moderation, member management, and analytics. The Builder link opens Experience Builder, where the site's pages, components, and theme are designed.
What All Sites lets admins do and where the work actually happens
What you actually do from the All Sites page
The All Sites page itself is a directory, not an editor. Most actions launch from it: Create a new site, open Workspaces for content moderation, open Builder to design pages, copy a site URL, or toggle activation. Settings that apply to every site in the org (Digital Experiences enabled, default audience, sharing for guest users) sit nearby under Digital Experiences Settings.
The Experience Cloud site lifecycle
A new Experience Cloud site starts as a draft inside Builder. Once the pages are designed and the navigation works, the admin activates the site from All Sites. Active sites are reachable at their configured URL by members who have the right profile or permission set. Deactivating returns the site to draft and stops public reachability. Most production rollouts go through several rounds of pilot activation with a limited audience before a public reveal.
Workspaces, the per-site dashboard
Workspaces is the operational dashboard for one site. It includes Content Management (CMS workspaces, articles, files), Moderation (flag and remove user-generated content), Members and Audiences, Pages, Engagement (login activity, gamification), Branding, Recommendations, and Reputation. Most day-to-day site admin work happens inside Workspaces; All Sites just lists which site each Workspaces session is scoped to.
Templates and what they pre-configure
When a new site is created, admins pick a template. The template seeds page layouts, components, sharing model defaults, and example content. Customer Service ships pages for cases and knowledge. Partner Central ships dashboards and PRM components. Help Center is a knowledge-heavy template with no case features. Build Your Own LWR is an empty Lightning Web Runtime template for orgs that want to author everything from scratch.
URL configuration and custom domains
Each site has a URL slug appended to the org's Experience Cloud subdomain (orgname.my.site.com/sitename). Custom domains can be added via My Domain and HTTPS certificates, so the site renders at help.customer.com or partners.customer.com. URL changes can affect SEO and existing bookmarks; All Sites is the page where the slug change happens.
Site activation and deactivation
Activation makes the site reachable. Deactivation returns it to draft state. Both actions take effect within a few minutes. The Status column on All Sites reflects the current state and is the fastest place to verify whether a public-facing site is live or in maintenance.
Site licensing and member counts
Experience Cloud sites consume member licences. External member licences come in flavours (Customer Community Plus, Partner Community, External Apps, and so on) with different pricing and feature scopes. The All Sites page is also where admins land to validate member counts before a marketing push; running out of licences mid-launch is one of the more avoidable rollout failures.
Common pitfalls
The most common pitfall is forgetting that All Sites lists every site in the org including legacy Force.com Sites. The two surface kinds are different products but appear on the same page. The second pitfall is assuming the Active toggle is enough to publish; the site also needs to be published in Builder so the latest design is live. Activation without publishing produces a live-but-empty-looking site.
How to create a new Experience Cloud site from All Sites
Creating a site is a fast wizard. The hard part is choosing the right template and licence type before clicking New, because changing them mid-build is harder than starting over.
- Open All Sites
Setup, Digital Experiences, All Sites. Click New to launch the site creation wizard.
- Pick a template
Choose Customer Service, Partner Central, Help Center, Build Your Own LWR, or one of the industry-specific templates. The template seeds pages, components, and default permissions.
- Name the site and pick a URL slug
Provide a Name and URL slug. The slug is appended to the org's Experience Cloud subdomain and is hard to change once members start using the site.
- Add members and configure sharing
Workspaces, Administration, Members. Add the profiles or permission sets that should access the site, then configure sharing for the objects that should be exposed.
- Design in Builder, then publish and activate
Open Experience Builder, design pages and navigation, click Publish to push the design live. Back on All Sites, switch the site Status to Active. The site is now reachable.
Decides the pre-built pages, components, and sharing defaults for the new site.
Human-readable site name shown across Setup.
The path component appended to the org's Experience Cloud subdomain.
The profiles and permission sets granted access to the site.
Active makes the site reachable; Inactive returns it to draft.
- Activate is not the same as Publish. The site has to be published in Builder for design changes to go live, even if Active in All Sites.
- Force.com Sites and Experience Cloud sites appear in the same All Sites list but are different products. Changing one will not affect the other.
- URL slugs are hard to change once members are using the site. Pick the slug deliberately the first time.
- Experience Cloud sites require Digital Experiences to be enabled at the org level. The All Sites page will be empty otherwise.
Trust & references
Cross-checked against the following references.
- Experience Cloud OverviewSalesforce Help
- Create an Experience Cloud SiteSalesforce Help
Straight from the source - Salesforce's reference material on All Sites.
- Manage Your Experience Cloud SitesSalesforce Help
About the Author
Dipojjal Chakrabarti is a B2C Solution Architect with 29 Salesforce certifications and over 13 years in the Salesforce ecosystem. He runs salesforcedictionary.com to help admins, developers, architects, and cert/interview candidates sharpen their fundamentals. More about Dipojjal.
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