How to Launch Your First Salesforce Experience Cloud Site: A Simple Guide

Author

Abhijit Kumar

March 31, 2026

Introduction

Launching a Salesforce Experience Cloud site (formerly Community Cloud) is a fantastic way to connect with your customers, partners, or employees in a branded, digital space directly linked to your Salesforce data.

It might seem daunting, but it’s actually quite a straightforward process. In this guide, we’ll walk you through the steps to get your first site up and running, from the absolute basics to some more advanced concepts.
Let’s get started!

Before You Start: The Checklist

Salesforce Org: You need a Salesforce instance with appropriate Experience Cloud licenses.
A Goal: What is the purpose of your site? (e.g., a customer help center, a partner portal for registering deals).
Content: Have some basic assets ready, like your company logo, welcome text, and perhaps a few Knowledge Articles.

Step 1: Enable Digital Experiences

The very first thing you must do is flip the main switch in Salesforce setup that makes these sites possible.

Go to Setup in Salesforce.
In the Quick Find box, type “Digital Experiences.”
Select Settings.
Check the box that says Enable Digital Experiences.
You’ll be asked to create a unique domain name for your sites. Choose something branded and professional.
Click Save.

Step 2: Create Your Site and Choose a Template

Now that the feature is on, you can create your site. Salesforce provides excellent pre-built templates to save you time.

From Setup, search for “All Sites” and click New.
You will see a list of templates. These are pre-designed website themes with built-in functionality:
Customer Service: Great for self-service help centers with case management.
Partner Central: Ideal for collaborating with partners on sales and leads.
Help Center: A simple, public-facing knowledge base for articles.
Build Your Own (Aura/LWC): For when you want a blank canvas to start from scratch.
Select the template that best fits your goal and click Get Started.
Give your site a Name and a URL suffix (e.g., /support).
Click Create.

Step 3: Customize with Experience Builder

This is where magic happens. After creating the site, you enter the Experience Builder. This is a “what-you-see-is-what-you-get” editor.

Theme & Branding: Click the “Theme” icon (paintbrush) on the left menu. Here you can change color palettes, upload your logo, and select fonts to match your brand guidelines.
Drag-and-Drop Components: The top-left “Components” icon (lightning bolt) opens a menu of pre-built blocks. You’ll find things like “Rich Content Editor” (for text and images), “Headline,” and “Tabs.” Just drag them onto the page where you want them.
Pages & Navigation: Use the dropdown menu at the very top of the screen to navigate between different pages (like Home, Contact Support, etc.) or create new ones. You can also configure your site’s main navigation bar here.

Step 4: Manage Members and Access

Your site looks great, but who can see it?

Go to the Administration workspace (you can get there from the top-left menu in the Builder).
Click on Members.
Here, select which profiles and permission sets should have access.
Tip: If you are building a public Help Center that doesn’t require login, you need to configure the “Guest User Profile” to ensure public access to specific data.
Under Login & Registration, you configure how users sign in. You can set up a custom login page and decide if new users are allowed to self-register.

Step 5: Preview and Publish

Always test before going live.

Preview: Click the Preview button in the top right corner of Experience Builder. This shows you exactly what your users will see.
Mobile Check: In preview mode, switch between desktop, tablet, and mobile views to ensure your site looks great on all devices.
Publish: Once you’re happy, click Publish. This pushes your changes to the live URL.
Activate: Finally, from the Administration workspace, click “Activate” to make the URL accessible to your users.

Leveling Up: Advanced Features & Customization

Once you have the basics down, you might find that the standard templates and components don’t quite do everything you need. This is where Experience Cloud truly shines. It is highly extensible.
Here are some advanced features to keep in mind for the future:

1. Custom Components (LWC)

Sometimes the out-of-the-box blocks aren’t enough. If you need a highly specific feature, like a complex product configurator or a custom dashboard integration, your Salesforce developers can build Lightning Web Components (LWC). Once built, these custom components appear in your builder’s component palette just like the standard ones, ready to be dragged and dropped onto the page.

2. Salesforce Flow Integration

Want to guide a user through a complex process, like filing a detailed warranty claim or completing a multi-step survey? You can build sophisticated automation using Salesforce Screen Flows and embed them directly onto an Experience Cloud page. It brings powerful business logic right to your site visitors.

3. Audience Targeting (Personalization)

You don’t have to show the same site to everyone. Using Audiences, you can personalize what users see based on their profile, location, or record data.

Example: You could have a “Special Offers” component on your homepage that is only visible to users whose Account Type is “Gold Partner,” while hiding it from everyone else.

4. Advanced Branding via CSS

While the theme settings handle colors and fonts, sometimes you need precise control over spacing, borders, or specific element styling. In the Theme settings, there is an “Edit CSS” area where someone with web design skills can add custom CSS code to fine-tune the site’s visual appearance precisely.

5. The AppExchange

Before you decide to build a custom component from scratch, check the Salesforce AppExchange. Many partners have already built dozens of cool Experience Cloud components, Salesforce AI (like advanced calendars, video players, or document organizers) that you can install and use immediately.

Important Things to Remember

Start Small: Don’t try to build Rome in a day. Launch with a Minimum Viable Product (MVP), gather feedback, and iterate.
Content is King: A beautiful site is useless without helpful content. Keep your articles and information updated.
SEO Matters: If your site is public, use the SEO settings in the Builder to help Google index your pages so customers can find you.
Data Security: Be very careful with object permissions, especially for the Guest User profile on public sites. Only expose the data that absolutely needs to be public.