Salesforce Experience Cloud

When to Use

• When building customer self-service portals, partner communities, or public-facing sites
• When configuring guest user access and reviewing external user security
• When developing LWC components for Experience Cloud sites
• When managing Experience Cloud deployment (Network, ExperienceBundle metadata)
• When designing sharing models for community/external users

@../_reference/EXPERIENCE_CLOUD.md

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Site Setup Procedure

Step 1 — Choose Site Type

Site Type	Use Case
Customer Service	Self-service portal (Knowledge, Cases)
Partner Central	Channel partner management (Leads, Opps)
Build Your Own (LWR)	Custom branded site, full customization
Help Center	Public knowledge base, no login required

For new sites, use LWR (Lightning Web Runtime) for better performance, SEO, and LWC-only components.

Step 2 — Configure User Licensing

User Type	License	Access
Customer Community	Community	Read/create own records
Customer Community Plus	Community Plus	Read/create + sharing rules
Partner Community	Partner Community	Leads, Opps, deal registration
Guest User	None	Public read access only

Step 3 — Set Up Sharing Model

External users see records based on their Account association:

External User -> Contact -> Account -> Records shared with that Account

Configure Sharing Sets in Setup for account-based access. Each community has automatic share groups: All Customer Portal Users, All Partner Users.

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Guest User Configuration

Guest users access your site without logging in. This is the highest-risk area for data exposure.

Profile Permissions

• Grant Read only on objects explicitly needed for public display
• Review: Setup > Digital Experiences > [Site] > Guest User Profile

Guest User Sharing Rules

Configure in Setup > Sharing Settings > Guest User Sharing Rules:

Object: Knowledge__kav
  Criteria: IsPublished__c = TRUE AND Channel__c includes 'Public'
  Access: Read Only
  Shared With: Guest User (site-specific)

Securing Apex Controllers for Guest Access

// Use "with sharing" to enforce sharing rules
// Use WITH USER_MODE for CRUD/FLS enforcement
public with sharing class PublicKnowledgeController {
    @AuraEnabled(cacheable=true)
    public static List<Knowledge__kav> getPublicArticles() {
        return [
            SELECT Title, Summary FROM Knowledge__kav
            WHERE PublishStatus = 'Online' AND IsVisibleInPkb = true
            WITH USER_MODE
        ];
    }
}

with sharing is necessary but not sufficient for guest users. You must also configure Guest User Sharing Rules. Without them, the query returns zero results.

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LWC in Experience Cloud

Component Meta XML

<LightningComponentBundle xmlns="http://soap.sforce.com/2006/04/metadata">
    <apiVersion>66.0</apiVersion>
    <isExposed>true</isExposed>
    <targets>
        <target>lightningCommunity__Page</target>
        <target>lightningCommunity__Default</target>
    </targets>
    <targetConfigs>
        <targetConfig targets="lightningCommunity__Default">
            <property name="title" type="String" label="Card Title" default="Welcome"/>
        </targetConfig>
    </targetConfigs>
</LightningComponentBundle>

Accessing Community Context

import communityId from '@salesforce/community/Id';
import communityBasePath from '@salesforce/community/basePath';
import isGuest from '@salesforce/user/isGuest';

Light DOM for Theming

LWR sites support Light DOM, allowing site-level CSS to style component internals:

export default class ThemedComponent extends LightningElement {
    static renderMode = 'light';
}

Navigation

import { NavigationMixin } from 'lightning/navigation';

// Navigate to a community named page
this[NavigationMixin.Navigate]({
    type: 'comm__namedPage',
    attributes: { name: 'Home' }
});

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CMS Content

Manage content via CMS Workspaces, publish to site channels.

import { getContent } from 'experience/cmsDeliveryApi';

@wire(getContent, { channelId: '$channelId', contentKeyOrId: '$contentId' })
content;

get title() { return this.content?.data?.title?.value; }

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Custom Authentication

Self-Registration Handler

global class CustomRegistrationHandler implements Auth.RegistrationHandler {
    global User createUser(Id portalId, Auth.UserData data) {
        Account portalAccount = [SELECT Id FROM Account WHERE Name = 'Community Users' LIMIT 1];
        Contact c = new Contact(
            AccountId = portalAccount.Id, FirstName = data.firstName,
            LastName = data.lastName, Email = data.email
        );
        insert c;

        Profile p = [SELECT Id FROM Profile WHERE Name = 'Customer Community User'];
        return new User(
            ContactId = c.Id, ProfileId = p.Id,
            Username = data.email + '.community',
            FirstName = data.firstName, LastName = data.lastName,
            Email = data.email, Alias = data.firstName != null ? data.firstName.left(8) : 'guest',
            EmailEncodingKey = 'UTF-8', LanguageLocaleKey = 'en_US',
            LocaleSidKey = 'en_US', TimeZoneSidKey = 'America/Los_Angeles'
        );
    }

    global void updateUser(Id userId, Id portalId, Auth.UserData data) {
        update new User(Id = userId, FirstName = data.firstName,
            LastName = data.lastName, Email = data.email);
    }
}

Social login: configure in Settings > Login & Registration > Social Sign-On (Google, Facebook, Apple, LinkedIn, or custom OAuth providers).

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Deployment Steps

Metadata Components

Metadata Type	Directory
Network	networks/
ExperienceBundle	experiences/
CustomSite	sites/
NavigationMenu	navigationMenus/

Deploy Procedure

sf project deploy start --source-dir force-app/main/default/experiences
sf project deploy start --source-dir force-app/main/default/networks

Publish via Experience Builder UI or Apex: ConnectApi.Communities.publishCommunity(null, communityId);

Deployment Checklist

1. Deploy Network metadata (site configuration)
2. Deploy ExperienceBundle (pages, themes, routes)
3. Deploy NavigationMenu and dependent components (LWC, Apex, objects)
4. Publish the site
5. Verify guest user profile permissions
6. Test with community user login

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SEO and Performance

• Configure sitemap in Settings > SEO (LWR sites only)
• Use semantic URLs (/orders/12345 not /s/detail/a01xx000003ABC)
• Enable CDN caching for static assets (default for LWR)
• Use @AuraEnabled(cacheable=true) for read-only data
• Use Custom Labels for multi-language support

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Related

Guardrails

• sf-security-constraints — Enforced rules for guest user permissions, sharing, and CRUD/FLS

Agents

• sf-lwc-agent — For LWC components used in Experience Cloud sites