WES custom hosting

Project Settings

Where to find it

  1. Open your project.
  2. Go to Settings in the project sidebar.
  3. The General settings section is at the top, with the Save changes button beside it.

Settings is visible to team admins only. Members do not see it in the sidebar. See Members, roles and sign-in.

Below General settings are sections with their own pages:

Which changes need Save changes

Text fields and two dropdowns wait for you to click Save changes:

  • Project name
  • Project domain
  • Staging URL
  • Root directory
  • File Prefix
  • Staging visibility
  • Publishing mode
  • Robots.txt

Everything else saves the moment you change it: the switches, the Sitemap structure dropdown, Url Rewrite base paths, and the Exclude from sitemap.xml list. Changing one of these reloads the form, so click Save changes on your typed edits first.

Every setting applies from your next publish. Pages already on staging or at a destination keep their old output until you publish again.

Project name

A human-readable name for the project. It identifies the project in WCH and does not appear on your site. It is required.

Project domain

The public URL of your live site, for example https://www.example.com. It is required. WCH uses it to build:

  • Every URL in your sitemap.xml.
  • The canonical link on every page.
  • The domain in your pages' hreflang links.

Enter the full URL including https://. When you create a project from a Webflow site, WCH fills this field with the site's webflow.io address. Change it to your live domain before you launch, or search engines see your Webflow address in the sitemap and canonical links.

Staging URL

Your custom Webflow staging domain, if you have one, for example staging.mydomain.com. WCH uses it to recognize a Webflow staging publish so a publishing webhook does not treat it as production. Webflow's own *.webflow.io domain is always treated as staging, so leave this blank if you only use that. See Webhooks.

Root directory

Nests the whole site inside a folder, for example marketing-site. Use it when this project shares a bucket or repository with other content. The archive, the deployed files, sitemap.xml, and robots.txt all move into the folder, and page links expect the site to be served from that folder. Enter the folder name with no leading or trailing slash.

Changing it leaves files at the old path at your destination. See File Prefix and Root directory.

File Prefix

Adds text in front of the asset folder names. assets/ puts CSS and scripts in /assets/files/ and images in /assets/images/. Leave it blank for the plain /files/, /images/, and /videos/ folders. See File Prefix and Root directory.

Staging visibility

Controls who can open your staging site:

  • Public staging: anyone with the URL.
  • Private staging: requires a WCH login.
  • Off: no staging site.

Switching to or from Public staging deletes your staging build and page version history. Public and private builds are stored separately. Download any archive you want to keep before you change it, then run Publish all pages. Switching between Private staging and Off keeps the build.

See Staging site.

Publishing mode

Chooses how WCH finds your pages: Sitemap, API, or Url Rewrite. Choosing API asks you to connect Webflow first if the project is not connected. When you choose Url Rewrite, a base path list appears under the dropdown. Base paths you add or remove save immediately. The mode itself needs Save changes. See Publishing modes.

Pagination

See Pagination for how WCH publishes paginated collection lists.

Include Code Components

When on, WCH downloads the files your Webflow Code Components need into your project, so they load from your own host. See Code Components.

Use full asset path

When on, scripts, videos, and most stylesheets are stored in subfolders that mirror their original URL, inside /files/ and /videos/. When off, they sit flat at the top of those folders. Images are not affected. See File Prefix and Root directory.

Sitemap structure

Chooses between one flat sitemap.xml and a sitemap index split by locale, or by locale and topic. See Sitemap settings.

Remove trailing slash from URLs

Writes URLs without the trailing slash, /about instead of /about/, in your sitemap and canonical links. See Sitemap settings.

Alias and Build folder

Both are read only. The Alias is the project's short identifier, set when you created the project. It appears in your staging site URL and cannot be changed. Build folder shows the folder your staging build lives in.

Robots.txt

The exact contents of the robots.txt file WCH publishes at the root of your site. WCH publishes what you enter here, word for word. It does not copy the robots.txt from your Webflow site, and it does not add a sitemap line for you. Leave the field blank and your site gets no robots.txt rules.

A typical file:

User-agent: *
Allow: /
Sitemap: https://www.example.com/sitemap.xml

Thumbnail

A read-only preview of the project image shown in WCH. WCH takes it from the Open Graph image of your Webflow site.

Settings your team can set for you

Team admins can set defaults in Settings in the main sidebar. They reach your project in two different ways:

  • Follow the team until you change them here: Publishing mode, Include Code Components, and Use full asset path. While you have never set them on this project, the team value applies, including later changes to it. Once you change one here, the project keeps its own value.
  • Copied once when the project is created: Root directory and Staging visibility. Changing the team value later does not change existing projects.

See Team settings and templates.

Testing your changes

  1. Change the setting and click Save changes if it needs it.
  2. Open Rendering, tick one page, and click Publish selected.
  3. Open that page on your staging site and check it. For domain, sitemap, or robots.txt changes, open /sitemap.xml or /robots.txt on staging.
  4. For settings that change paths, such as Root directory, File Prefix, or Use full asset path, run Publish all pages so every page picks up the new paths.
  5. Once staging looks right, promote to production.