What Are Force Platform Sites?

Use Force Platform Sites to publicly expose any information stored in your organization through pages that you can brand to match the look and feel for your company. Sites are hosted on the Force Platform servers, so there are no data integration issues. And because sites are built on native Visualforce pages, data validation on collected information is performed automatically. You can also enable users to register for or log in to an associated Customer Portal seamlessly from your public site.

The following examples illustrate a few ways that you can use Force Platform Sites:

• Create a Salesforce Ideas site—Use Force Platform Sites to host a public community forum for sharing and voting on ideas about your company, services, or products. Salesforce Ideas sites can be made public using Force Platform Sites.

• Publish a support FAQ—Provide helpful information on a public website where customers can search for solutions to their issues.

• Create a store locator tool—Add a public tool to your portal that helps customers find stores in their area.

• Publish an employee directory—Add an employee directory to your company’s intranet by creating a site restricted by IP range.

• Create a recruiting website—Post job openings to a public site and allow visitors to submit applications and resumes online.

• Publish a catalog of products—List all of your company’s products on a public website, with model numbers, current prices, and product images pulled dynamically from your organization.

Important

To enable Force Platform Sites for your Developer Edition organization, go to http://developer.force.com and follow the instructions posted under “Featured Content.” If you have been following the examples in the previous chapter, your Force Platform organization should be ready for the exercises in this chapter. If you have not done the exercises, or want to start with a fresh version of the sample Recruiting application, please refer to the instructions in the Code Share project for this book. You can find information on how to access that project in Chapter 1: Welcome to the Force Platform. In addition, the project contains instructions on how to update your organization with changes required for this chapter.