Launching a website for serving traffic on the Arc XP platform
This article outlines how to launch a website from a custom domain on the Arc XP platform, making it available for public internet use or internal testing. These steps are essential to ensure cache clearing, scalability, and secure delivery of your site.
Note
In Arc XP, creating a website and launching it are two distinct steps. First, you must create the website in Site Service, which defines the name, sections, and hierarchy of your site. When that's complete, you can launch the site, provisioning it to serve live or test traffic on the internet.
Terminology
custom domain - a customer-defined domain such as
www.example.comorm.example.com.apex domain - the root domain of a site, such as
example.com.onboarding - the default status assigned to a site after provisioning in Site Settings.
live - the status assigned after a site is launched and serving traffic.
Follow these steps to create and launch a website in Arc XP.
Start by creating your site using Arc XP's Site Service application. This involves setting the website name and defining its sections and hierarchies. After you create a site, your site receives a Site ID, which you need in later steps. See Defining your organization's websites.
Next, provision the website to assign a default hostname and make the site visible in Site Settings. This default hostname follows the format: <siteID>.<sitename>.<env>.<web/api>.arc-cdn.net. At this point, the site's status is set to Onboarding. See Managing site settings.
Arc XP provides you with the necessary DNS CNAME records, and for apex domains, an IP address if Arc XP is managing redirects (for example, from non-www to www).
To configure these domains within Arc XP, you must contact us.
If you're an onboarding customer not yet live on Arc XP, submit a request to Arc XP Customer Enablement.
If you're a customer already live on Arc XP but launching a new site, submit a request to Arc XP Customer Support.
See Arc XP domain management and SSL certification provisioning.
To serve traffic (either public or internal), you must submit a launch request through Arc XP Customer Support. This step finalizes the transition of traffic to Arc XP's delivery platform and updates the site's status to Live in Site Settings. It also enables cache clearing for the site. See Site Launch FAQ.
Environment requirements
For Production environments, you must complete the full launch as outlined.
However, for non-Production environments (like Sandbox, Staging, or Development), a formal site launch is not required. These environments are designed for testing and have limited capacity.
Default hostnames in different environments
In Production, you cannot serve traffic using Arc XP's default hostname. You must configure a custom domain.
In non-Production environments, using the default hostname is acceptable, but we recommend implementing safeguards to prevent public access and search engine indexing. These include:
Blocking search engines using a robots.txt file. See Managing .txt files with Outbound Feeds.
Cookie-protecting the site using Web Gateway customizations.
Restricting access by IP, CIDR, or User-Agent through Web Gateway.
Differences between external URLs and authenticated routes
Authenticated routes, such as accessing a site through Trident or previewing articles in Composer, require user login and are not publicly accessible. By contract, external URLs and default hostnames are public-facing and benefit from Arc XP's Web Application Firewall and caching infrastructure.
Additionally:
Pages rendered through PageBuilder appear at
/pf/<section>in Admin but are accessible as/sectionon the live siteResizer is available at
/resizerOutbound feeds are found at
/arc/outboundfeeds