Go Live: Overview

A few things are usually needed before going live "for real".

Add a Not Found Page

When a user enters a URL that does not exist, a "famous" 404 Page Not Found error occurs. Many servers are configured to handle this automatically and to serve a 404.html page instead.

The Rocket Launch preset ships a default 404 template you can use.

To enable it, you need to create a 404.md and use the 404 layout.

👉 docs/404.md

---
layout: layout-404
permalink: 404.html
---

This results in a 404.html page, which will do nothing by itself. But many hosting services like netlify or firebase, for example will redirect 404s to this 404.html by default.

If the hosting provider doesn't already do this, then you may be able to accomplish it via some settings for example by using a .htaccess file in case of an apache server.

Add a Sitemap

A sitemap can be used to inform search engines or services about the pages your site has.

You can create one by adding this file:

👉 docs/sitemap.njk

---
layout: layout-raw
permalink: /sitemap.xml
eleventyExcludeFromCollections: true
---

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
  {% for page in collections.all %}
    {%- if page.url !== '/404.html' -%}
    <url>
      <loc>{{ rocketConfig.absoluteBaseUrl }}{{ page.url | url }}</loc>
      <lastmod>{{ page.date.toISOString() }}</lastmod>
      <changefreq>{{ page.data.changeFreq if page.data.changeFreq else "monthly" }}</changefreq>
    </url>
    {%- endif -%}
  {% endfor %}
</urlset>