Publishing your content

You've created a content gem and want to share it with your audience. In this article, we show you how to set up hosting, control who has access, and how to distribute it.

Setting up hosting

🎥 Watch our video on this topic!

Every Foleon Doc needs to live on its own URL. You have 2 options for hosting your content: using a (free) Foleon domain or your own custom domain.

In the dashboard, go to the project you would like to set up the hosting for. In Project settings, scroll down to Your domain setup. There you will see the 2 options discussed below.

• Choosing a domain name

  If you want to host your content on a free domain, you can select the Use a (free) domain option. For this option, "foleon" will always be included in the URL.

  💡 The (free) Foleon domain is automatically secured.

  

  By default, your Foleon Doc will then live on the following URL:

  https://account-alias.foleon.com/project-alias/foleon-doc-alias/page-alias

  📖 To better understand this URL and its makeup, please read Use a (free) domain. 

  Next to using the default hostname, you can choose to publish on a custom domain instead.

  Your Foleon Doc will then live on a (sub)domain that you set up with your hosting provider. URLs will look something like this:

  http(s)://your-subdomain.your-domain.com/foleon-doc-alias/page-alias

  📖 Want to learn how to set up your own custom domain? Read all about it in our article Hosting on a custom domain.

  Next to these 2 options in the domain setup, it's also possible to host Foleon Docs on your own server.

  We compress your content to a ZIP file and send it to you, so you can download it and later upload it to your own server. Read all about it in our article Hosting Foleon Docs on your own server.

  💡 This feature is not included in every plan. If you're interested in using this functionality, please reach out to our Customer Success Management team.

• Securing your (custom) domain with an SSL/TLS certificate

  If you're hosting your content on a custom domain, you have to secure it with an SSL/TLS certificate to make sure it's safe for your audience.

  In the example below, you can see that the connection of foleon.com is secure. The URL starts with HTTPS and the lock icon in the address bar also represents a safe domain. You'll need to obtain and install an SSL/TLS certificate to secure your custom domain.

  

  ✅ HTTPS - A certificate is installed and the connection is private/secured.
  ❌ HTTP - No certificate installed and the site’s connection is not secured.

  If a certificate is not installed, it’s possible that visitors will see a message stating that the website is not secure and won’t be able to continue. In the example below, you can see what this message might look like in Google Chrome.

  

   

  To secure your custom domain, Foleon generates an SSL/TLS certificate — for free — and automatically renews it. The certificates we obtain for your Docs are issued by Let’s Encrypt. In this article, we show you how this works.

  ⚠️ If you've just successfully set up your custom domain, it will take a few minutes for the certificate to be active.

  💡 Do you want to configure your SSL/TLS certificate manually? Learn more in our article Manually configure SSL/TLS for a custom domain. 

  

Controlling who has access to your content

When you’re ready to publish your Foleon Doc, it’s important to think about the level of access your audience has. Depending on your plan, we have different options for setting up access control.

In the Foleon Doc settings, scroll down to find the Access control tab. You'll find the following options there:

• Username & password

• Whitelist by IP

• Whitelist by email address (OTP)

• Lead generation

• Single Sign-on (SSO) (not mentioned by default – on request)

Publishing

Once you're finished creating your content, you can publish it. This means that you set it live on the domain that you've set up. During publishing, we optimize the Foleon Doc for search engines, fine-tune the imagery, and make it available on a hostname of your choice.

When you're ready to set your Foleon Doc live, click on Publish in the top right corner of the editor. Next, you will see a pop-up with the final Publish button and what your Foleon Doc URL will be.

When the Foleon Doc is published, the screen will show you the URL and the possibility to republish when a new change has been made.

You can republish your content as frequently as you like to, however small the change may be. The URL will always stay the same – unless you change its setup.