Publishing

Frontend’s publishing feature deploys your project to a live production environment, making it accessible online to your audience. Publishing builds an optimized version of your application and serves it on a secure, public URL.

How Publishing Works

When you publish a Frontend project, the platform handles the deployment for you:

1. Your project is built into an optimized production bundle
2. The build is deployed to Frontend’s managed hosting
3. Static assets are distributed over a global CDN for fast loading
4. A secure HTTPS URL is assigned to your project
5. Your site goes live and is accessible to anyone with the link

This happens with a single click — no DevOps knowledge, servers, or manual configuration required.

What Runs in Production

A published project runs your full Next.js application, so features that go beyond a static site are available in production, including:

• Server-side rendering (SSR)
• API routes and server actions
• The full range of npm packages

All environment variables from your project are automatically included in the production build, so your API keys and configuration carry over seamlessly.

Technology Stack

Published Frontend projects use a modern, performant stack:

• Next.js — a React framework providing server-side rendering, static generation, and optimized performance
• React — the industry-standard library for building user interfaces
• Tailwind CSS — a utility-first CSS framework for rapid UI development

Custom Domains

Every published project receives a default Frontend URL, and you can connect your own domain for a more professional presentation. See Custom Domains for setup instructions.

Publishing Updates

When you make changes to your project, they won’t appear on the live site automatically:

• Changes made in the Frontend editor are staged for review
• You must explicitly publish again to deploy these changes
• Each new publication creates a new deployment version
• Previous deployments are preserved in your project history

This workflow ensures that you can thoroughly test changes before making them public, maintaining control over what your users see.

Best Practices

To ensure successful publishing:

• Test your application thoroughly in the development preview before publishing
• Use the preview to check how changes will appear in production
• Publish smaller updates frequently rather than infrequent major changes
• Monitor the console to catch and address build issues quickly

By following these practices, you can maintain a reliable, up-to-date published version of your Frontend project.