Zesty URLs & Their Functionality

There are several URLs at your disposal for each of your instances. These can be used in a variety of circumstances specific to the environment's needs, for example, production versus development.

All domains are added to an Instance in the Accounts interface. As part of the URLs features, Zesty offers the creation of domains that utilize the top-level domain: zesty.dev. This allows for the creation of dev environment domains at the point initialization of an instance. All domains added to an Instance that do not utilize the Zesty top-level domain will need to have their DNS configured and will need to be a valid owned, domain in order to be applied.

URL Sections with Zesty vanity top-level domain

Types of URLs

There are different types of URLs, that deliver different content based on environment. Below will cover each type and use case.

1. Webengine Preview URL - Dev Branch
2. Production URL - Live Branch
3. Origin URLs - Hybrid CDN setup, Live Branch

Webengine Preview URL

The Webengine Preview URL was designed to provide a preview of current published content along with any saved drafts of content that is not yet live. This provides a detailed look at what publishing the latest drafts will render on the live site.

With every Instance created an initial preview URL is provided. It can be accessed in Manager by clicking any of the Preview links provided throughout the instance, including inside the Content Items' details panel, the Code App files' footer bucket, and Manager's dropdown menu. Users can create additional Preview URLs by adding domains in the Account Manager of an Instance. When doing so, the user will need to select the dev Branch in order to establish the new domain as a Preview URL. This will provide the same output as the autogenerated Webengine Preview URL.

When creating additional preview URLs, Zesty users have the option to use the vanity zesty.dev top-level domain. For example: mypreviewdomain.zesty.dev. This feature is built into every Instance and allows the user to create domains immediately after creating an instance.

Preview URLs are not intended for production and live site use. Due to the fact that these URLs provide a preview of drafted unpublished content, users run the risk of unapproved content rendered in production when these URLs are used in production. Additionally, content accessed through a preview URL is not cached, when used in production the preview URL will hit the server for each request rather than the CDN.

Webengine Preview URL Breakdown

Production URLs

Production URLs will only display live published content. These should be utilized for production sites to avoid unpublished or unapproved drafts rendering on live sites. These URLs are established as Production by selecting the live Branch when adding the domain in the Instance's Account Manager.

When adding these domains to the instance the user has two options:

1. Create a domain using zesty.dev top-level domain and assign it to the Live branch
2. Add a user-owned, DNS configured domain and assign it to the Live branch\

After assigning the domain to the Live branch, the user can view the differences in rendering between the Preview URL and the Production URL.

Production URLs:

Production URL with Zesty vanity must be added to the Live Branch

Production URL without Zesty vanity must be added to the Live Branch

Webengine Origin URLs

The Webengine Origin URL is utilized when the user's content is configured on a Hybrid CDN setup. Detailed information on the Hybrid setup can be found here and Hybrid Webengine Mode and other available Webengine Modes here. This URL was specifically designed to route the user's CDN to a Zersty.io origin. Origin domains request content directly from Zesty.io servers, with Webengine rendering published content, code, and API endpoints. This URL should be provided to the user's CDN configuration. The origin URL is similar to a Production URL, in that it only delivers live published content, removing the risk of draft and/or unapproved content displaying on the production site.

After setting up the Live domain, with DNS configured, it will be used to configure the origin URL. When adding the Live domain that will be used for the origin, it is not necessary to include the www subdomain. For example, mydomain.com is sufficient to complete the origin URL.

To configure the domain remove any periods in the domain and replace them with hyphens. After doing so, connect .webengine.origin.zesty.zone to the end of the domain.

For example, mydomain.com will appear as:
mydomain-com.webengine.origin.zesty.zone

The origin URL does not need to be registered to your Instance because it utilizes a Production URL from your Instance. It is available to use immediately after registering the Production URL that it is configured from. Subdirectory paths can be appended to the origin URL just as you would with your Production or Preview URLs.

Webengine Origin URL