Experience Cloud Developer Guide

Get Up to Speed with Experience Builder Sites
Before You Begin
What Is Salesforce Lightning?
Which Experience Builder Template Do I Use?
Experience Cloud Developer Release Notes
Develop Experience Builder Sites: The Basics
Customize the Look and Feel of an Experience Builder Template
Develop Secure Sites: Authenticated and Guest Users
Develop Secure Sites: CSP, LWS, and Lightning Locker
Analyze and Improve Experience Builder Site Performance
Add Pardot Tracking to Your Experience Builder Site
Use a CMS with Your Experience Builder Site
Report on Deflections: The Deflection Signals Framework
Deploy an Experience Cloud Site from Sandbox to Production
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Get Up to Speed with Experience Builder Sites

Experience Builder templates let you create branded sites where your employees, customers, and partners can connect. Built on the Lightning Component framework, Experience Builder templates include many ready-to-use features and Lightning components. But the real power of the Lightning Component framework is that you can develop custom Lightning components and features to meet your unique business needs and completely transform the look and feel of your site.

As of Spring ’19 (API version 45.0), you can build Lightning components using two programming models: the Lightning Web Components model, and the original Aura Components model. Lightning web components are custom HTML elements built using HTML and modern JavaScript.

The rename to Experience Cloud in Spring ’21 (API version 50.0) introduced some new terminology, and it can be tricky to know what’s what. Here’s the rundown.

Experience Builder sites (formerly called Lightning communities) are template-based sites that you customize in Experience Builder. And with the launch of the Lightning Web Runtime (LWR), we added two new terms for even greater clarity.

  • LWR sites are built with the latest LWR-based templates, such as the Build Your Own (LWR) template. LWR sites can only be used with Lightning web components, not Aura components. See LWR Sites for Experience Cloud.
  • Aura sites are built with our original templates, such as Customer Service, Partner Central, and Customer Account Portal, which run on Aura. For Aura sites, Lightning web components and Aura components can coexist and interoperate on a page.

Tip

You can configure both Lightning web components and Aura components as drag-and-drop components for Experience Builder. Admins and end users don’t know which programming model was used to develop the components—to them, they’re simply Lightning components.

Whether you’re a developer, partner, or ISV, this guide describes how to create custom Aura sites and components, theme layout components, and Lightning Bolt Solutions.