Deploy Your First Site
In this tutorial you will deploy a live website that pulls content from your Vivreal collections. The entire process takes about five minutes once you click deploy.
Prerequisites
- A Vivreal account with an active group
- At least one collection with some objects (follow Create a Blog if you need one)
Open the Sites section
Navigate to Sites from the dashboard. If this is your first site you will see an empty state with a prompt to create one.
Create a new site
Click + New Site. A dialog will appear asking for:
- Site name — a human-friendly label (e.g. "My Blog Site"). This also determines the default subdomain.
- Template — choose Basic for a clean starting point. The basic template includes a homepage, a collection listing page, and individual detail pages.
Click Create to kick off the deployment.
Watch the deployment pipeline
After you click Create, Vivreal runs an automated pipeline behind the scenes:
- A dedicated GitHub branch is created from the template.
- AWS Amplify picks up the branch and starts building.
- Environment variables (API key, site ID) are injected automatically.
- A default Amplify URL is assigned.
You can monitor progress on the Sites page — the status will move from Building to Live.
Visit your live site
Once the status shows Live, click the site URL to open it in a new tab. You should see your content rendered on the basic template.
The default URL looks like https://branch-name.d1abc2def3.amplifyapp.com. You can connect a custom domain later from the site settings.
Make a content change
Go back to Collections, edit one of your objects, and save. Refresh your deployed site — the change will appear on the next page load because the Client API serves content in real time.
The deployment pipeline uses AWS Amplify for hosting and Step Functions for orchestration. You do not need an AWS account — Vivreal manages all infrastructure for you.
If the build fails, check that your group has at least one collection. The template expects content to be available at build time for static pages.
What Happens Under the Hood
| Stage | Service | Duration |
|---|---|---|
| Branch creation | GitHub API | ~5 seconds |
| Build & deploy | AWS Amplify | 2-4 minutes |
| Domain association | Route 53 | Instant (default) |
| Health check | Step Functions | Automatic |
Next Steps
- Connect a custom domain in Site Settings
- Switch to the Ecommerce template if you have a product catalog
- Set Up Stripe Payments to sell products from your site