Install Sana Webstore on Web and Database Server

Sana Pre-Live Mode

Setting up a webstore and filling it with content to make it available to customers online to make purchases takes time. Therefore, it can be important for a webstore administrator to make the webstore inaccessible to external users and not indexable by search engines while it is in the setup and configuration phase. It can be also useful if you plan to upgrade your webstore.

You can set up Basic Authentication to make your webstore inaccessible to external users. But if you need to run the application pool of Sana in the "Integrated" pipeline mode, then you can't use Basic Authentication. For more information, read about Sana with the integrated pipeline mode in the previous article.

As an alternative, you can use the Sana feature called "Pre-Live Mode" for your webstore. It can be enabled and disabled in the "Web.config" file of the Sana Commerce Frontend.

<add key="PreLiveModeEnabled" value="false" />

When the value of the "PreLiveModeEnabled" parameter is "true", it blocks access to the webstore to external users. The webstore is also not indexed by search engines. Any user who tries to open the webstore by URL will see a page with the message that the webstore is temporary unavailable.

Meanwhile, a webstore administrator or product content manager for example can continue setting up the webstore and open it directly from Sana Admin. Any user who has access to Sana Admin can open the webstore directly from it by clicking View webstore.

Note that the pre-live mode can be enabled only on the Sana Framework level. This means that if you have several webstores running on a single Sana Framework, you can enable and disable the pre-live mode for all webstores globally, but not for a certain webstore.