What are Branch Defaults?

Branch Defaults are the settings CloudCannon applies to new branched Sites in a Project. When you or a Team Member creates a new branch Site, either by branching from the Main Branch, branching from another Site, or through Deploy Previews, CloudCannon reads your Branch Defaults to decide how the new Site should publish, authenticate, and grant permissions.

When you create a new branched Site, CloudCannon copies the source Site's configuration, then applies any default configuration set in your Branch Defaults. This separation lets you keep production settings on your Main Branch (for example, a public Site with no authentication) while applying stricter defaults to branched Sites (for example, password protection on every Testing Domain).

You can configure Branch Defaults at any time from Project Settings. Branch Defaults apply to Sites created after the change; existing Sites keep their current settings.

Publish settings#

Publish settings control the behavior of a branched Site when it publishes back to its Publish Branch. These are the same as the settings you can control per-Site from the Publishing page under Site Settings, except that they apply by default to all branched Sites in a Project.

Default Publish mode determines how CloudCannon merges changes from the branched Site. By default, this is set to Inherit from branched site, so a branched Site uses the same publish mode as the Site it was branched from. Alternatively, you can set it to Merge changes immediately or Create a Pull Request for approval, so the same publishing mode is used by all branched Sites in a Project. For more information, please read our documentation on what Publishing Methods are.

The Delete branched site after publishing checkbox controls whether CloudCannon will clean up your Project by removing branched Sites after they have published to their Publish Branch. By default, this setting is unchecked. It seeds the default Delete this site after publishing setting on every new branched Site in your Project, including Sites CloudCannon creates automatically from Pull Requests through Deploy Previews. This behavior does not affect the branch in your Git Repository. For more information, please read our documentation on turning on delete after publishing.

Authentication settings#

Authentication settings control who can see Testing Domains for Sites in your Project and how they can gain access to them. These are the same settings you can control per-Site from the Authentication page under Site Settings, except that they apply by default to all branched Sites in a Project.

Default authentication method determines whether a visitor needs to authenticate their identity to view a Testing Domain. By default, this is set to Inherit from branched site, so a branched Site uses the same authentication method (if any) as the Site it was branched from. Alternatively, you can set it to CloudCannon (requires an account in your Organization), Password, or None. For more information, please read our documentation on Authentication.

The Default site password creates a shared password that applies to all branched Sites in the Project that use Password authentication.

Permission settings#

Permission settings are available for Organizations that use Custom Permission Groups.

By default, Team Members in Custom Permission Groups can always view, edit, or merge the branched Sites they create. CloudCannon does this by granting new permissions to their Custom Permission Group when they branch a Site inside a Project.

CloudCannon adds these permissions to every Custom Permission Group in the Team Member's Organization that allows them to create branched Sites (any group with *:create or site-branch:create), even if a particular group's branching rights are scoped to a different Project or Site. Custom Permission Groups without any branching-creation permission are unaffected.

CloudCannon adds the following permissions to each qualifying Custom Permission Group, scoped to the new branched Site:

• site:file:write — Edit content files.
• site:dam:write — Edit assets in the DAM.
• site:inbox:write — Manage form submissions.
• site:publish:write — Publish changes back to the parent Site.
• site:details:read — View Site details.
• site:activity:read — View Site activity.
• site:build:details:read — View build details.
• site:sync:details:read — View sync details.
• site:build-deploys:details:read — View build deploy details.

You can see this list in CloudCannon by clicking the Show permissions button in the Permission settings section.

You can disable this behavior with the Do not grant new permissions on Site branch setting, which restricts Team Members to Site permissions defined specifically in their Custom Permission Groups.