The publishing feature gives portal admins control over when their portal's frontend website design goes live to end users in production. Publishing is specifically scoped to your frontend user-interface design.
In this article, we will cover the following topics:
2.1 Understanding the Two Publishing Environments
2.2 Opening the Publishing Modal
1. Pre-Requisites
Before you publish your portal, the following areas of the platform should be properly configured. Anything that is incomplete or misconfigured at the time of publishing will be reflected in what goes live.
| Area | Why It Matters |
| Branding |
Branding settings are what publishing deploys to the frontend website. If Branding is not configured, your published site will not reflect your intended design. Note: Branding is handled in a separate ticket/workflow. |
| Domains | Your production domain (free or custom) determines where the published site is accessible. Custom domain configuration affects which domain becomes the primary production URL. |
| Welcome Message (Site Settings – General) | The welcome message is pulled from Site Settings – General and deployed as part of the publish job. Ensure it is saved before publishing. |
2. How to Publish your Portal
2.1 Understanding the Two Publishing Environments
The publishing modal presents two distinct environments: Preview and Live. These serve different purposes in your workflow, and they behave differently by default.
2.1.1 Preview Environment
Preview Environment (Also known as Staging) is your internal preview environment. It gives you a way to see how your portal looks and behaves before anything is exposed to end users.
2.1.2 Live Environment
Live Environment (Also known as the live environment) is what your end users can see access.
Production is not published automatically — you must choose when to make your portal live. This gives you control over the timing of public-facing changes.
Behaviour:
- Production is unpublished by default for all new portals.
- When published, the changes propagate to both free and custom domain environments (if a custom domain exists).
Displayed information:
| Element | Description |
| Primary production domain (read-only) | Your portal's primary production URL. By default, this is in the format: https://www.portal.bakuun.com/{portalID}. If a custom domain has been added, it becomes the primary domain instead. |
| Status indicator | Shows either Not published (if never published) or the last successful publish time using relative timestamps (e.g., Published 3 hours ago). |
2.2 Opening the Publishing Modal
- To begin the publishing process, click the Publish call-to-action.
- This opens the Publish to Live Site modal, which would require confirmation to publish the changes. Click Publish Now to make your changes live.
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Once you click Publish Now, the modal transitions to the Publishing in progress view. This signals that your publish job has been submitted and is now running in the background.
If you click Close while publishing is in progress, the modal will close, but the publish job will continue uninterrupted. You can navigate elsewhere in the portal and return later to check the result.
Important: The Publishing modal is only accessible to portal admins. If your portal is in a Delete Pending state or has been deleted, the modal is not accessible and publishing cannot be performed.
2.3 Adding a Custom Domain
The publishing modal includes an Add a custom domain option for production. This option is only shown when no custom domain has been configured yet — once a custom domain is added, this link is hidden from the modal.
Only one custom domain is permitted per portal.
- At the Publish to Live Site modal, click Add a custom domain.
- You will be taken to the Domains section of Site Settings.
Read this article to understand how you can configure this setting: Domain Customisation
2.3.1 How a Custom Domain Affects Publishing
Once a custom domain is added, it changes how production publishing works:
- The custom domain becomes the primary production domain.
- The free production domain remains active as a secondary alias.
- All subsequent publish actions apply to both the custom domain and the free production domain simultaneously.
2.4 Publish Completion
2.4.1 Successful Publish
What happens after a successful publish:
- A confirmation popup appears with the message: "Site Published Successfully"
- The status timestamp for each published environment is updated to reflect the current publish time.
- If production was published for the first time, its status changes from Not published to Published.
2.4.2 Failed Publish
If something goes wrong during the publish job, the modal transitions to the Publishing failed state.
What happens when publishing fails:
- A confirmation popup appears with the message: "Publishing failed. Please try again"
- You can retry publishing immediately after a failure by clicking the Publish button again — there is no cooldown period or retry limit.
- Retrying uses the latest saved configuration.
3. Troubleshooting & Edge Cases
| Issue | Likely Cause | Resolution |
| The Publish CTA is not visible or accessible | Your portal is in a Delete Pending or Deleted state, or you do not have portal admin permissions. | Verify your role is portal admin. If the portal is in Delete Pending state, publishing is not available until the state changes. |
| Publishing failed partway through — I am worried my live site is broken | A failed publish is non-destructive. No partial deployment is applied. | Your previously published site remains intact and unaffected. Retry publishing immediately — there is no cooldown. If failures persist, check that your Branding and Domains settings are correctly configured. |
| I closed the modal during publishing and am not sure if the job completed | Closing the modal does not cancel the publish job — it continues running in the background. | Reopen the Publishing modal by clicking the Publish CTA. The current status indicator will reflect whether the job completed successfully, is still in progress, or failed. |
| I cannot see the Add a custom domain link in the Publishing modal | A custom domain has already been added to your portal. The link is hidden once a custom domain exists. | Navigate directly to Site Settings – Domains to manage your existing custom domain. The relevant URL format is: https://portal.bakuun.com/portals/{portalID}/site-settings/domains |