Launch checklist
Go through this list on the production project, in order, before you point your domain at the site. Every item is something Arc CMS provides; the second column says where to check it.
Accounts
| Check | Where |
|---|---|
| [ ] Only the people who run the site have the admin role. There are two roles, admin and user, and an admin can do everything. | Users; see Users and roles |
| [ ] Visitors can create accounts only if your site needs them. Signing up to a form needs no account. | Settings, User Settings, Enable User Signups |
| Check | Where |
|---|---|
| [ ] A real provider is active (not the Debug Provider, which only logs; leaving it also turns off Show password reset codes on screen), the connection test passed, and the sender name and address are yours. | Settings, Email Settings |
| [ ] Logo, colors, footer text and physical address are set for Composer and broadcast emails, and each signup form's two emails carry your logo and address too. | Brand Kit, under Email + SMS (or Email); each form's Email Templates |
| [ ] A test email arrives in an inbox, not in spam. | Settings, Email Settings, Send a Test Email; then Email Logs |
| [ ] The unsubscribe and preferences links in a list email open a working page, and unsubscribing stops further marketing email. | Send a broadcast to a list with only yourself on it; see Email engine |
Sign-ups
| Check | Where |
|---|---|
| [ ] Signing up on the live home page with your own address sends the code and the welcome email, and you then appear in the form's Users and in Contacts. | Your home page; Collect sign-ups |
| [ ] The terms notice on every signup form links to your terms and privacy policy. It links only pages you publish, so until then the words show as plain text. | The Terms and Privacy Policy standard pages, published; Write static pages |
| [ ] The home page, its title, the header and the footer show your brand and links, not Arc CMS's "not set up yet" placeholder. | src/custom/site/home.html, src/custom/site/header.html, src/custom/site/footer.html; Build your home page |
Legal pages and banners
| Check | Where |
|---|---|
| [ ] The Privacy Policy, Terms and Cookie Policy are written for your site, checked for where you work, and published. | Content, Info Pages; The standard pages |
[ ] No published page still holds a [Replace: prompt. Open each standard page you published and search it for [Replace:. | Content, Info Pages |
| [ ] The sign-in page shows your name, logo and colours, not Arc CMS's. | Settings, About; src/custom/site/sign-in.html, src/custom/site/site.css; Brand the sign-in page |
| [ ] About and Contact are filled in and published, and the footer lists them. | Content, Info Pages; The standard pages |
| [ ] Settings, About has the contact email, public phone, address and social links you want shown; the Contact page and your footer print them. | Settings, About; Let editors change your home page |
| [ ] Sending the contact form on the live Contact page puts the message in Messages and alerts you. | /info/contact; Messages; Contact form |
| [ ] The cookie banner has your wording and links to your cookie policy (the published Cookie Policy page, unless you set a link). It shows only on pages the app draws (sign-in, form pages, search, the member area), not on published pages. | Settings, Site Usage |
| [ ] You have chosen whether to show the "Built with Arc CMS" line on pages and emails. | Settings, Miscellaneous, Branding |
Search engines and AI
| Check | Where |
|---|---|
| [ ] Site Name, Production URL (your real domain) and the publisher identity are filled in. | Settings, About; Get found by search engines and AI |
| [ ] Crawler choices are saved and applied. | Settings, Discoverability, Save and apply to site |
[ ] /robots.txt and /sitemap.xml open on the live site and list addresses on your domain. | Your browser |
| [ ] Each published page has a meta description, and the main pages score 80 or more in the Checks tab. | The editor's SEO and Checks tabs |
| [ ] The site is added to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools, with the sitemap submitted. | Links on the Discoverability screen |
| [ ] The search index is complete and a search on the live site finds your pages. | Settings, Search, Rebuild everything |
Analytics
| Check | Where |
|---|---|
| [ ] Your Firebase web configuration has your own Google Analytics measurement id, so visits to the pages the app draws (sign-in, form pages, search, the member area) are counted. Published pages (the home page, content pages and static pages) carry no analytics tag, so their visits are not counted. | Analytics; Configure a project |
| [ ] Google Analytics is connected, so the admin dashboard shows traffic. | Settings, Analytics; Analytics |
Deploy and domain
| Check | Where |
|---|---|
| [ ] Your feature choice is final before the full deploy. | src/custom/features.ts; Choose your website's features |
| [ ] Everything is deployed to the production project: functions, database rules and indexes, storage rules, and the website. The guided deploy then publishes every page again by itself. | npm run deploy, then Everything; Deploy |
| [ ] The security rules on the project are the ones in the repository. | Security rules |
| [ ] Your domain is connected to the project's Firebase Hosting site. Arc CMS has no command for this: add the domain in the Firebase console, under Hosting. | Firebase console |
| [ ] After the domain works, the Production URL is set to it and every page is published again, so every page, the sitemap and the feeds use the domain. | Settings, About; then Content, Content types, Republish website (or npm run deploy, then Website) |
After launch
You are done with this path. For day-to-day work in the admin area, see Use the admin area; when something goes wrong, see Troubleshooting.