How to Activate or Deactivate Multiple Experience Cloud Sites
Plan site availability changes, distinguish activation from publishing, and verify each Experience Cloud site after a batch operation.
Published by Cloud Exam Coach · · 5 min read
← Back to all learning resourcesSeparate availability from published content
Publishing and activation serve different purposes. Publishing releases Experience Builder changes; activation changes the site availability state. Treat them as separate release decisions and confirm both when bringing a site online. Salesforce does not allow an activated site to return to Preview status.
Prepare an availability change
List each site, current state, requested state, business owner, and expected public URL. For deactivation, agree the interruption window and a recovery owner. Check customer-facing links and integrations that rely on the site before taking it offline.
Review and apply the selected action
Open Digital Experiences → All Sites in the intended org, then refresh the Sites Manager inventory. Select the approved sites and choose the supported activation or deactivation action. Inspect the target list before confirming. If the installed version does not expose the required action, manage the site through its native Salesforce administration settings.
- Run activation and deactivation as separate batches.
- Retain per-site results and investigate failures individually.
- Refresh the inventory to confirm the actual resulting states.
- Do not assume that a successful change on one site proves the whole batch succeeded.
Check the experience from outside Setup
After activation, verify the correct published content and access for the intended audiences. After deactivation, check the visitor-facing response and confirm it matches the agreed operational plan. Availability also depends on domains, membership, authentication, and permissions.
Recover deliberately
If a site was deactivated in error, confirm approval to restore service, reactivate that site, and retest its public URL. If content is incorrect, handle the content correction and publishing separately. Keep the change record with previous state, final state, actor, time, and validation outcome.