Publishing

ChatPage’s publishing feature provides a streamlined way to deploy your projects to a production environment, making them accessible online to your audience. Publishing creates a live, optimized version of your application that you can share with the world.

How Publishing Works

When you publish a ChatPage project, the system handles all the complex deployment steps automatically:

1. Your project files and code are deployed to Vercel, a leading hosting platform
2. An optimized production build is created for maximum performance
3. Static assets are distributed to a global CDN for fast loading
4. A secure HTTPS domain is assigned to your project
5. Your site becomes accessible via a unique URL

This end-to-end deployment process happens with a single click, eliminating the need for complex DevOps knowledge or manual server configuration.

Technology Stack

Published ChatPage projects leverage a powerful, modern technology stack:

• Next.js: A React framework that provides server-side rendering, static site generation, and optimized performance
• React: The industry-standard JavaScript library for building user interfaces
• Tailwind CSS: A utility-first CSS framework for rapid UI development

This stack ensures your published projects have excellent performance, modern features, and responsive design capabilities out of the box.

Important Considerations

When publishing a Shopify-connected project, it’s important to understand:

• Publishing does not modify or alter your Shopify template files or online store
• It creates a new Headless eCommerce landing page or website that connects to your Shopify backend
• Your Shopify products, collections, and checkout are accessed through the Storefront API
• The published site exists independently from your Shopify admin theme editor

This separation allows you to maintain your existing Shopify setup while creating custom shopping experiences with ChatPage.

Deploying to Vercel

If you connect your project to Vercel using our Vercel integration, publishing will also deploy your Next.js application to a live server environment. Deploying to Vercel is recommended for agents that need to take advantage of advanced Next.js features not available in the browser runtime environment, including:

• Server-side rendering (SSR)
• Static site generation
• Middleware
• Full range of npm package support

All environment variables from your project are automatically included in the Vercel build. You can monitor deployment progress and troubleshoot any build errors from the console, which is accessible from the web browser preview.

Publishing Updates

When you make changes to your project, they won’t appear on the live site automatically:

• Changes made in the ChatPage editor are staged for review
• You must explicitly publish again to deploy these changes
• Each new publication creates a new deployment version
• Previous deployments are preserved in your project history

This workflow ensures that you can thoroughly test changes before making them public, maintaining control over what your users see.

Best Practices

To ensure successful publishing:

• Test your application thoroughly in the development environment before publishing
• Use the preview functionality to check how changes will appear in production
• Consider setting up a staging domain for testing before updating your main domain
• Regularly publish smaller updates rather than infrequent major changes
• Monitor your deployment logs to catch and address issues quickly

By following these practices, you can maintain a reliable, up-to-date published version of your ChatPage project.