Start Building Your LWR Site

Learn about the initial steps to get a basic LWR in Experience Cloud site up and running, such as creating custom Lightning web components.

For details on more advanced customization, such as custom record components, see Add More Customizations.

  • Create an LWR Site in Experience Cloud

    Select the Build Your Own (LWR) or the Microsite (LWR) template to create an LWR site in Experience Cloud.

  • Create Custom Pages in an LWR Site

    LWR templates in Experience Cloud provide only a few key default pages, so you can create additional custom pages for your particular use case.

  • Create Theme Layouts in an LWR Site

    Theme layouts and theme layout components define the shared regions of LWR site pages. A theme layout component determines the header and footer for a site page and often includes navigation, search, and a user profile menu. You use the theme layout component in a theme layout and then assign the theme layout to a page. That way, every site page that you assign the theme layout to shows the same header and footer. LWR sites come with some theme layouts and theme layout components, and you can create your own.

  • Create Components for LWR Sites

    Each Lightning web component folder must include a configuration file named <component>.js-meta.xml. The configuration file defines the metadata values for the component, including the design configuration values for Experience Builder.

  • Create Custom Layout Components

    Layouts are supported in the Build Your Own (LWR) template using Lightning web components instead of Aura components. You can also create your own custom layouts in the same way as for Aura sites, but with some minor changes in syntax.

  • Create a Custom Navigation Menu Component

    The Build Your Own (LWR) template includes a Navigation Menu component that you can customize for the desktop and mobile versions of your site. If you prefer to create your own component, we recommend that you create a custom Lightning web component with an Apex controller to get the navigation items.

  • Publish Your LWR Site

    Unlike with Aura sites, you can publish your LWR site at any time, even when the site is unchanged. When changing your organization’s schema or updating a component used in an LWR site, you must publish your site to make the changes live. Otherwise, your site can break at runtime.