Staging and Adding New Domain Guidance

[SirHubalot]

I have started building templates and modules within Hubspot and comfortable with the development approach. However, one area I would like guidance on is the deployment approach. I have read articles regarding the staging approach and primary domains but would like confirmation on an approach for client site I am working on.

The Hubspot instance I am working on is currently in use and contains the following domain:

• 0000.hs-sites.com - connected to Website content type only
• blog.client.com - connected to Blog content type only
• info.client.com - connected to Landing Pages content type only

Now the client would like their main site (currently hosted on another platform) to be added to Hubspot.

What is required to do this?

I have uploaded my theme but now need to create a site structure without impacting the current content. Is the "0000.hs-sites.com" domain the best one to use? Would this be the sandbox? I noticed that I cannot update this domain to combine all the content types.

Can I create a new staging domain where I can start constructing and adding content such as Website, Landing and Blog pages? When ready, can I then update the domain to the clients main .com domain?

Apologies if my post is confusing.

[SirHubalot]

Any chance in anyone else adding to this? Thanks!

[SirHubalot]

@alyssamwilie  Apologies for the confusion.

I would use content staging if the client already had a www.clientname.com domain used within their Hubspot. I think the main confusion for me is since they do not have this domain assigned to Hubspot, where would I add all the content? This will be new content and different from the other domains the client is using.

[alyssamwilie]

I'm a bit confused on what exactly you're trying to accomplish so not sure if I'm giving you the right answers, but if you already have content in the portal why can't you just use Staging until you're ready for go live? Staging is a separate space from the live evinorment so would have no impact on the current content.

If you create a new primary domain and switch your content to it all currently live content is going to be switched to that domain. Also, to be able to add content of a certain content type to a domain that domain has to be set as the primary or as a secondary for that content type.

Secondary domains are only available in Marketing Hub Professional and Enterprise, CMS Hub Professional and Enterprise so don't know if you have that available to you. If you do you could create a secondary domain to host all your new content on. However, I'm not sure if there's an easy way to auto change all content on a secondary domain to the primary domain so at go-live you may have to manually change it for each page.

[SirHubalot]

I just had another idea...

Could I create a new primary domain? Something like - newsite.clientname.com. Add all my content here and when ready for live change the domain to www.clientname.com?

Would this effect any of the other domains the client has currently in use?

[SirHubalot]

Thank you both for your insight.

Each domain currently has content associated to them.

The strange thing is, if I am going to use the hs-sites.com URL to start adding my content for some reason I am unable to apply all the content types I require. Website is only selected and I am unable to add others, such as Landing page and Blog. Is this something I need to be concerned about?

So just to clarify. Is it ok for me to add content to the hs-sites.com domain?

@alyssamwilie  The info.clientname.com domain need to remain untouched, so I can't really push content to this. However, if the client allows this domain to be changed to their top-level www.clientname.com domain, this can be done at the time when we want to go live?

[alyssamwilie]

Hey @SirHubalot ,

I believe you're correct in that you cannot change a content type's primary domain to a sandbox URL (the hs-sites url). However, if it's currently set as your website primary you can use that URL to publish your web pages to currently. If you set them up in staging though you'll want to push them live first before switching so that they're URLs will update to the new domain. For landing pages you would want to stage/publish on the info.client.com domain and publish live first if you're going to change that domain. Blogs do not have a staging area so any published there will be on whatever domain you have set for the blog (usually the primary) and if they're posted to the primary when the primary is changed those URLs will be updated.

So my usual process for a portal that already has content and is having the primary domain switched to a new domain at launch and not before would be :

1. Create website and landing pages in Staging on their primary domain.

2. On launch day - push all website and landing pages live.

3. Switch blog's theme to new theme and make any necessary edits.

4. Switch the primary domains to the new domains.

If launching the new blog is more complicated than just switching the theme (such as having completely new content) then I create a new blog and at launch delete the old blog and switch the new blog to the correct URL before switching domains.

If the portal doesn't have any content on a content type then I just build directly in the dashboard instead of bothering with staging and then when the domain is connected everything just auto updates to the newly connected primary domain.

Hope this makes sense and is helpful.

[dennisedson]

Hello @SirHubalot ,

Welcome to the Community!

There are a lot of approaches you can take to this.  Is  there any live content on the portal as of now?  Blog, Landing pages?  If not, you can just build everything there.  You can safely use the 0000 hubspot site to build out your content.  Later when you connect domains, you will determine what content goes where.

I am very interested in this workflow topic!  There is good documentation here that you probably already have seen.

I am curious how @stefen , @Gonzalo and @Anton  approach this 🙂

Regardless, please share your experience so we can all learn the creative ways  that the community is tackling this topic