Introduction to Building

Building is when CloudCannon converts all your Site files into a single, functional website. Building through CloudCannon is optional; however, extra features are available if you enable Building. This includes preview screenshots of your pages in the Collection Browser, a Testing Domain and Custom Domain, and the Visual Editor.

Articles in this section are useful for developers responsible for configuring and managing Site builds in CloudCannon.

In the Building section of our Developer documentation, we cover:

• Configure your builds — Learn how to set up and manage your build settings
• Extend your builds — Learn how to add more functions to your build
• Schedule your builds — Learn how to schedule builds manually or automatically
• Output Files and URLs — Learn how CloudCannon matches output files to source files
• Headless Mode — Learn how to use CloudCannon as a CMS without building or hosting
• Site Mounting — Learn how to make files from one Site available to another at build time

Let’s briefly introduce a few of these topics.

Configure your builds#

CloudCannon needs to know a few details about your Site to build it, such as which SSG you are using and what commands to run. You can manage these settings on the Site Details and Build Configuration pages under Site Settings.

For a more in-depth explanation of build configuration, please read our documentation:

• Configure your first build
• Select your SSG
• Configure your command line options
• Configure your environment variables
• Pin your dependency version
• Lock builds for your Site

Extend your builds#

You can add more functions to your build to collect information from your Site, improve your build time, and more.

For a more in-depth explanation of the various ways you can extend your build, please read our documentation:

• Build hooks
• Including the .git folder
• Initial Site settings
• Committing build files
• Configure caching between builds
• Optimize your Site

Schedule your builds#

Scheduling a build lets you edit your Site when you have time and release your changes later.

For a more in-depth explanation of build scheduling, please read our documentation:

• Schedule your builds manually
• Schedule your builds automatically

Output Files and URLs#

When you build your Site, your SSG creates the output files your visitors see on the Internet. CloudCannon uses these output files for the Visual Editor preview and Collection Browser screenshots. You can configure how CloudCannon matches output files to source files and controls output URLs for collections.

For a more in-depth explanation of output files and URLs, please read our documentation:

• What is an output file?
• Update the output URL for a collection
• Disable output URL matching for a collection

Headless Mode#

If you don't want to build your Site in CloudCannon, you can enable Headless Mode. This disables building and hosting on CloudCannon while still allowing CloudCannon to manage your content.

For a more in-depth explanation of Headless Mode, please read our documentation:

• What is Headless Mode?
• Enable Headless Mode

Site Mounting#

Site Mounting makes files from one or more CloudCannon Sites available to another Site at build time, allowing you to share resources and trigger builds when the resources are updated.

For a more in-depth explanation of Site Mounting, please read our documentation:

• What is Site Mounting?
• Mount a Site
• Remove a mounted Site