• Page
|
• Edit

Contents 1 Does it only supports Visualforce as a language? Can we code the page in other languages? 2 What is the level of Visualforce knowledge required to code Sites? 3 Are there any tutorials on sites to get us started? 4 How does the domain name work? We usually have need to create sub domains. Is that possible? 5 Does it support multi language websites? 6 Can we create dummy sites in our sandbox to learn it? 7 I would love to use Sites for Profile Management (for my contacts in the database), any chance editing standard objects is coming in the future? 8 Is there a feature in existing Visualforce/Apex that cannot be done with sites? 9 Are static resources exposed to the public when enabling site, or just the levered resource? What if your resource is in a zip? 10 Is there a best practices guide for creating and managing sites through development? Key points would be any nuances that would be different about these pages related to sandbox vs. production. 11 What UI tools/technologies were used for the Big Cloud Realty site? 12 HTTPS pages will NOT be cached, right? 13 What UI tools/technologies were used for the Big Cloud Realty site? 14 Is there planned support for the equivalent of mod-rewrite and/or clean URLs? 15 What software do you use to edit the static content of your pages? Are you programming through the internal Apex editor? 16 Can you have Sites with Google Adsense - to display ads based on the content of the page? 17 If the business process requires, user after registration has to have access to Account and Opportunity - how that can be done? I see that the profile assigned for Customer portal user do not let us enable Account and Opportunity? 18 Can RSS feed be integrated with Sites? 19 Is there a best-practice method for images or other resources: Static Resources under sites or the document library? 20 e.g if ($User.userType == 'Guest') { ... redirect to login }  ? 21 How do governor limits fit into the Sites model? 22 How do you create the robots.txt file? 23 How does one test to see if the user is currently logged in when displaying content in a visualforce page? 24 Do you offer own analytics in addition to Google? Relatedly, can you integrate Apex logging and Google style page tagging? 25 SSO: is that via SAML 2.0? 26 Do I have this right... As an ISV building native apps, I cannot build pages in Sites for our customers with registered domain names? 27 Any reason to use a Component in the Site Template vs. putting the markup needed right into the Template? 28 What benefit would force.com/sites have over a CMS like Joomla/Drupal/wordpress 29 In order for me to develop a site on force.com I am taking it I will need to learn a new programming language. 30 To learn Apex what do you need to learn beforehand? 31 When a search engine spiders the site? Does that count towards page views? 32 If you want to build a site and provide a login for each of your customers, do you need a salesforce license for each of your customers? 33 When a user creates an account to get the watchlist functionality, do you burn a customer portal license? 34 How are website logins managed for public sites? Are additional licenses required? 35 Re customer portal licenses, how do those work? Do they need to be full SFDC subscribers or are their more limited licenses? I am thinking about users who may not be SFDC users. 36 Do individual customer logins (“Guest User”) on the site count as Salesforce license? 37 I have 1000 uses who are going to use authenticated login, do I need to purchase 1000 customer portals? 38 I am interesting in creating an e-commence site however from what I can tell it would require a customer portal license. From doing the math, this makes the solution cost prohibitive if you have a bunch of customers that are very transactional in nature. 39 How are site logins managed, PRM or Customer portal? 40 Can I track my pages using google analytics. 41 How do I enable sites for an existing Dev. Account? 42 Is there anyway to retrieve the URL of a site just by using its name? somthing like what we used to do with $Page ... There are some topics at the forums telling to use the standards methods from visualforce... the problem is thats not the correct url specified by the user nor the expected path (see your site URL)... 43 Can't access sites in sandbox. Setup | Develop | Sites is not available. However, it is available in production. 44 Is it possible to deploy this for an extranet? 45 Can we use this to update existing leads with information we capture that will impact their campaign status? 46 When setting the favicon, is it possible to use a favicon that is inside of a resource bundle, or does it need to be its own resource? 47 Where can I find the Sites Terms of Service? 48 Is Sites available on platform-only ORG's? 49 If register a URL on my Unlimited ORG today. Can that URL move to a different ORG next year -- as my business grows? 50 When will folders be available for VF? For sites, we usually want to have abc.com/topic1/abc, etc which we can't it seems we cant do with sites currently. 51 When they demoed the login to watch the listings, was that part of the customer portal or is that something that can be done without that option? 52 Does anyone know if there is a dreamweaver extension for visualforce. 53 How do I convince management that we need to be using this? 54 What happens if we do not specify anything in Site Robots.txt. Will search engine still be able to access Sites pages? 55 what constitutes a "click"? If I have a data surfacing via webservices into VF pages, does executing these count as a view? 56 Does customization like this have to be done through Eclipse or are there are tools we can use? 57 Please define "fully-qualified" domain names/types that shall never be used. 58 How do you specify keywords or descriptions in the <meta> tags? 59 Can you cache at a more granular level than at the page level? Cache a video, etc. 60 Will this eventually cost extra to enterprise users? 61 I'm thinking of using Sites for our intranet. Can I make parts of the site editable for users who don't know Visualforce? For example, I'd like someone in Sales to update the sales content. 62 How do sites apply to Nonprofit version of Salesforce? Are they available to Nonprofits? 63 How about any integrated shopping cart? any restriction? 64 Can Sites be used as an alternative to Customer Portals? 65 Can you use cross-site references across Force.com Sites? 66 RE: SEO. Does the page render when the site has been accessed, or does the page sit as static HTML. 67 When Google Bot spiders the page, will it see the text as visible text? 68 Hello, we are an ISP and we actually are using an unlimited edition, so we could manage 25 force.com sites. Our custom domain in force.com should be something like isp-org.force.com, so we can have some websites named: isp-org.force.com/service1, isp-org.force.com/service2, isp-org.force.com/service3, isp-org.force.com/service4, and so on. The question is: acting on our DNS zones, can we use 25 different URLs like www.ourservice1.com, www.ourservice2.com, www.ourservice3.com, www.ourservice4.com, and so on? 69 Support for mobile Web browsers? 70 Can I have my own authentication process implemented into SF? 71 Is there another way (no customer portal) to implement authentication? 72 How are content and file attachments used in sites? 73 What does the limit of 25 sites exactly mean? 74 Can you deploy a website to a "staging" server? 75 Can ISVs build self-service websites that can be customized to their customers? In other words, one customer of Force.com, targeting multiple look and feels and data customization. Will that be possible? Does the ISV have to do anything special in the data design 76 If your CNAME is with Google Apps, will it still work to have a live site at Force or do I have to re-direct? 77 How does one cache? How much control over the http response headers to we have? 78 How do you display non-static images and documents in a Customer Portal. Portal users can upload them but then we can't get them to display.

This is the FAQ for the webinar Tech Talk: Force.com Sites. For more resources, see the Sites page in the Technical Library.

Does it only supports Visualforce as a language? Can we code the page in other languages?

Currently you can only develop sites in Apex / Visualforce, JavaScript, and HTML .

What is the level of Visualforce knowledge required to code Sites?

Of course, depends on the level of sophistication of your site but site development is Visualforce development. Please see the Visualforce for resources.

Are there any tutorials on sites to get us started?

Yes. Please take a look at http://developer.force.com/sites

How does the domain name work? We usually have need to create sub domains. Is that possible?

Yes. If you own the domain, you can create a CNAME to force.com and we can host multiple domains (up to 25). See the Cookbook recipe for help on this.

Does it support multi language websites?

Yes. Please check the An Introduction to Force.com Sites article.

Can we create dummy sites in our sandbox to learn it?

Yes. You can also use the developer edition.

I would love to use Sites for Profile Management (for my contacts in the database), any chance editing standard objects is coming in the future?

You need to authenticate users with portal integration in order to gain edit access on standard objects.

Is there a feature in existing Visualforce/Apex that cannot be done with sites?

You can't edit/delete standard objects in Sites, but other than that you can leverage all of the Apex/VisualForce platform.

Are static resources exposed to the public when enabling site, or just the levered resource? What if your resource is in a zip?

Static resources are marked public or private. All public resources will be exposed. For more information please check Delivering Static Resources with Visualforce article.

Is there a best practices guide for creating and managing sites through development? Key points would be any nuances that would be different about these pages related to sandbox vs. production.

Yes. There is information available at http://developer.force.com/sites

What UI tools/technologies were used for the Big Cloud Realty site?

Building Sites is building VisualForce pages - so you can use the same tools (Builder, IDE etc.) You can also use complimentary tools to develop CSS etc.

HTTPS pages will NOT be cached, right?

HTTPS requests and authenticated requests are not cached regardless of Visualforce page cache settings

What UI tools/technologies were used for the Big Cloud Realty site?

This was built with Force.com IDE and Visualforce pages.

Is there planned support for the equivalent of mod-rewrite and/or clean URLs?

It is on the roadmap, but do not use this information to influence your buying decisions.

What software do you use to edit the static content of your pages? Are you programming through the internal Apex editor?

That, and using the Force.com IDE.

Can you have Sites with Google Adsense - to display ads based on the content of the page?

Yes.

If the business process requires, user after registration has to have access to Account and Opportunity - how that can be done? I see that the profile assigned for Customer portal user do not let us enable Account and Opportunity?

Those would be CRM or partner portal users if they require update on opportunity

Can RSS feed be integrated with Sites?

Yes, we have a feature called "Feeds" that allows you to create RSS feeds from SOQL queries. See An Introduction to Force.com Sites

Is there a best-practice method for images or other resources: Static Resources under sites or the document library?

For more information please check Delivering Static Resources with Visualforce article.

e.g if ($User.userType == 'Guest') { ... redirect to login }  ?

You can do that if you want. The easier way there is to just not allow that user to use the page on the security settings; then it will *automatically* redirect them to login. (It does this by showing the user the Unauthenticated page template which contains a SiteLogin component, not by redirecting the user to another URL)

How do governor limits fit into the Sites model?

For more information please check Force.com Sites Best Practices article.

How do you create the robots.txt file?

You create it as a visualforce page and then on the site setup page you link it up. Please check An Introduction to Force.com Sites article.

How does one test to see if the user is currently logged in when displaying content in a visualforce page?

$User.userType == 'Guest'

Do you offer own analytics in addition to Google? Relatedly, can you integrate Apex logging and Google style page tagging?

Yes, check out the Sites Usage Reporting Package on http://developer.force.com/sites

SSO: is that via SAML 2.0?

That is one option for SSO. You can use oauth, saml 1.1/2.0, or your own custom authentication service. For more information please check Authenticating Users on Force.com Sites article.

Do I have this right... As an ISV building native apps, I cannot build pages in Sites for our customers with registered domain names?

You most definitely can; the customer, however needs to setup the custom URL themselves associated with the site. The pages, code, security, etc, can be setup by the ISV.

Any reason to use a Component in the Site Template vs. putting the markup needed right into the Template?

Not a huge deal, It's more easily reused across your sites. And it can be more easily packaged and migrated

What benefit would force.com/sites have over a CMS like Joomla/Drupal/wordpress

Force.com is great for apps that need things like database, workflow, security rules, workflow and analytics. Force.com Sites is a platform technology used by developers and IT professionals to build custom web apps.

In order for me to develop a site on force.com I am taking it I will need to learn a new programming language.

You need to learn Visualforce for the user interface, and Apex if you want to build your own controller. This is the same language used to write triggers, business logic on the platform, etc.

To learn Apex what do you need to learn beforehand?

Nothing - you can start with Apex - it is similar to Java. Check out the page Apex in the technical library.

When a search engine spiders the site? Does that count towards page views?

Yes.

If you want to build a site and provide a login for each of your customers, do you need a salesforce license for each of your customers?

Yes - they would need a customer portal license - these are priced at a different (lower) rate than other salesforce licenses. Please contact your sales rep.

When a user creates an account to get the watchlist functionality, do you burn a customer portal license?

Every time you create an authenticated user you use a customer portal license.

How are website logins managed for public sites? Are additional licenses required?

For more information please check the [[Authenticating Users on Force.com Sites] article.

Re customer portal licenses, how do those work? Do they need to be full SFDC subscribers or are their more limited licenses? I am thinking about users who may not be SFDC users.

They are more limited users with a substantially cheaper price point.

Do individual customer logins (“Guest User”) on the site count as Salesforce license?

Customer Portal logins do. Guest Users (which are not authenticated) do not.

I have 1000 uses who are going to use authenticated login, do I need to purchase 1000 customer portals?

1000 licenses, yes.

I am interesting in creating an e-commence site however from what I can tell it would require a customer portal license. From doing the math, this makes the solution cost prohibitive if you have a bunch of customers that are very transactional in nature.

Customer portal licenses are priced at a different rate than user licenses. Please contact your account manager.

How are site logins managed, PRM or Customer portal?

Either.

Can I track my pages using google analytics.

Yes

How do I enable sites for an existing Dev. Account?

Yes, go to http://developer.force.com/iwantsites if it isn't enabled already on your DE account.

Is there anyway to retrieve the URL of a site just by using its name? somthing like what we used to do with $Page ... There are some topics at the forums telling to use the standards methods from visualforce... the problem is thats not the correct url specified by the user nor the expected path (see your site URL)...

You can refer to the current site using $Site. If you use $Page, the URL is correctly generated as well (including the site details).

Can't access sites in sandbox. Setup | Develop | Sites is not available. However, it is available in production.

If you refresh sandbox it should appear.

Is it possible to deploy this for an extranet?

Yes, you can IP restrict a Site.

Can we use this to update existing leads with information we capture that will impact their campaign status?

Most definitely!

When setting the favicon, is it possible to use a favicon that is inside of a resource bundle, or does it need to be its own resource?

Needs to be its own resource right now.

Where can I find the Sites Terms of Service?

There is a link on the site main page.

Is Sites available on platform-only ORG's?

Yes.

If register a URL on my Unlimited ORG today. Can that URL move to a different ORG next year -- as my business grows?

Yes. Discuss this with support when the time comes.

When will folders be available for VF? For sites, we usually want to have abc.com/topic1/abc, etc which we can't it seems we cant do with sites currently.

That is on the roadmap.

When they demoed the login to watch the listings, was that part of the customer portal or is that something that can be done without that option?

Part of customer portal - you need to decide what parts of your site should only be accessed by an authenticated user (customer portal user) or anonymous (guest).

Does anyone know if there is a dreamweaver extension for visualforce.

Not yet.

How do I convince management that we need to be using this?

Here's one thing you can use: http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Application-Development/Report-Salesforcecoms-Forcecom-is-Five-Times-Faster-than-Java-NET-878047/

What happens if we do not specify anything in Site Robots.txt. Will search engine still be able to access Sites pages?

The default behavior is for the robots.txt file to disallow search engines from crawling your page.

what constitutes a "click"? If I have a data surfacing via webservices into VF pages, does executing these count as a view?

Public pages, Public RSS feed calls, Ajax calls count as page views.

Does customization like this have to be done through Eclipse or are there are tools we can use?

There is a meta data API, so you could use other tools,like Ant.

Please define "fully-qualified" domain names/types that shall never be used.

Fully qualified urls are "www.salesforce.com/page" where relative urls are "/page".

How do you specify keywords or descriptions in the <meta> tags?

Add <meta> tags to your Visualforce page and they will automatically be placed in the head.

Can you cache at a more granular level than at the page level? Cache a video, etc.

Not at this time.

Will this eventually cost extra to enterprise users?

No. This is included in Enterprise Edition.

I'm thinking of using Sites for our intranet. Can I make parts of the site editable for users who don't know Visualforce? For example, I'd like someone in Sales to update the sales content.

Yes, that is possible.

How do sites apply to Nonprofit version of Salesforce? Are they available to Nonprofits?

They *are* available to nonprofits; included with the free 10 users.

How about any integrated shopping cart? any restriction?

This is not out the box at this point. Please check AppExchange for partner solutions.

Can Sites be used as an alternative to Customer Portals?

Sites is for anonymous access and Portals are for authenticated access. These products complement each others.

Can you use cross-site references across Force.com Sites?

You can link across sites, but session state (such as customer portal login) are not shared

RE: SEO. Does the page render when the site has been accessed, or does the page sit as static HTML.

It is dynamic, unless you cache.

When Google Bot spiders the page, will it see the text as visible text?

Yes. You can control how google sees your sites by overriding the robots.txt of your site.

Hello, we are an ISP and we actually are using an unlimited edition, so we could manage 25 force.com sites. Our custom domain in force.com should be something like isp-org.force.com, so we can have some websites named: isp-org.force.com/service1, isp-org.force.com/service2, isp-org.force.com/service3, isp-org.force.com/service4, and so on. The question is: acting on our DNS zones, can we use 25 different URLs like www.ourservice1.com, www.ourservice2.com, www.ourservice3.com, www.ourservice4.com, and so on?

Yes.

Support for mobile Web browsers?

You can create any type of UI for any type of device with Visualforce.

Can I have my own authentication process implemented into SF?

No, this is against the terms of service.

Is there another way (no customer portal) to implement authentication?

The only other authentication is Partner Portal.

How are content and file attachments used in sites?

Attachments can be used in Sites, by default they are cached for 10 minutes .

What does the limit of 25 sites exactly mean?

Please check An Introduction to Force.com Sites. You can have 25 different custom domains served from force.com sites.

Can you deploy a website to a "staging" server?

Yes - for example a (free) Developer Edition or Sandbox.

Can ISVs build self-service websites that can be customized to their customers? In other words, one customer of Force.com, targeting multiple look and feels and data customization. Will that be possible? Does the ISV have to do anything special in the data design

Yes you can. Sites are not "packageable" right now, but everything else can be.

If your CNAME is with Google Apps, will it still work to have a live site at Force or do I have to re-direct?

You have to CNAME to Sites directly to use a custom web address.

How does one cache? How much control over the http response headers to we have?

For more information please check the Force.com Sites Best Practices article.

How do you display non-static images and documents in a Customer Portal. Portal users can upload them but then we can't get them to display.