--- title: "Setting up your Factory" date: "2024-02-14T06:18:38+00:00" summary: "Discover essential steps for setting up your Site Factory-hosted websites. Learn about governance, distributions, theming, user management, and performance optimization to ensure a successful launch and efficient site management." image: type: "page" url: "/site-factory/setting-your-factory" id: "f50cb8b3-1d6d-4b89-a0ba-f31cc96dd486" --- When preparing to develop your new Site Factory-hosted websites, your development plan should incorporate the following actions to ensure a smooth and successful launch: Note For a list of specific tasks to help ensure a smooth, successful launch, see [Checklist for migrating your sites to Site Factory](/site-factory/migrate/plan). 1\. Perform governance assessment --------------------------------- Your success with Site Factory depends on a strong governance strategy, which ensures you design and build your websites in a sustainable manner. Review our product-agnostic [governance strategy documentation](/site-factory/governance-site-factory "Governance on Site Factory") and [Governance on Site Factory](/site-factory/governance-site-factory "Governance on Site Factory") to prepare for creating the infrastructure underpinning your websites. 2\. Create your distributions and installation profiles ------------------------------------------------------- After creating a development plan, you should [select a base distribution](/site-factory/workflow/distro) on which to base your websites’ creation. Important * Develop your base distribution and installation profiles before you begin website development. * Applications running the [current Drupal version](/service-offerings/guide/software-life-cycle#supported-drupal-version) must configure `vcs` (version control) and `sync` directory values in [hooks](/site-factory/extend/hooks) as described in [Importing a configuration directory](/site-factory/altering-values-settingsphp-hooks "Altering values in settings.php with hooks"). 3\. Create and manage theming ----------------------------- As part of your governance policy, your [distribution of Drupal](/site-factory/workflow/distro) and [installation profiles](workflow/profiles.html) should provide base themes containing the majority of layout and design. Each website in your platform should leverage an [external theme repository](/site-factory/theme/external) to provide per-website branding and styling within the guidelines set by your platform’s base theme. 4\. Familiarize yourself with the Site Factory Management Console ----------------------------------------------------------------- See [Managing your Site Factory sites](/site-factory/manage) to familiarize yourself with the Site Factory Management Console, which helps you manage the configuration of your platform. 5\. Configure users, teams, and roles ------------------------------------- Your governance strategy should focus on defining roles you can apply globally to all websites hosted on Site Factory, instead of providing website-by-website permissions. The Site Factory Management Console [provides predefined roles](/site-factory/manage/users/admin) to help you manage your shared infrastructure and websites. As part of your initial setup, you should perform the following tasks: * Configure your Cloud Platform teams and permissions * Configure [single sign-on](/site-factory/manage/sso) ([current Drupal version](../support/guide/software-life-cycle.html#supported-drupal-version)) * Configure [login authentication mode](/site-factory/manage/login-mode) (Drupal 7 only) * Set up and require [two-factor authentication](/site-factory/manage/users/tfa) for your users 6\. Create websites, and the groups and site collections to manage them ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Best practices would have you [create groups](/site-factory/manage/website/groups-create) in the Site Factory Management Console before creating individual websites. Site Factory [groups](/site-factory/manage/website#acsf-groups-subgroups) allow you to separate your websites into logical sets, and [control user access](/site-factory/manage/website/users) to the websites in the Site Factory Management Console. For more information about managing your groups after creating them, see [Managing site groups](/site-factory/manage/website/groups-manage). As you create websites, you can also [create site collections](/site-factory/manage/website/site-coll), which bundle and organize related websites together for easier management. A site collection contains a primary website (typically the production website) and one or more secondary websites. By grouping related websites in a site collection, you can associate the current production website with a custom domain URL. After completing the staging website, you can promote it to be the primary website in the collection, which will then be available at the custom domain URL you created for the site collection—without needing to perform a DNS change. Important Review the naming conventions in [Organizing your websites, collections, and groups](/site-factory/manage/website/organize) to ensure your groups, site collections, and websites receive names that remain helpful as your platform expands. 7\. Connect your platform to other Acquia services -------------------------------------------------- As you develop on Site Factory, review the steps necessary to integrate your websites with other Acquia products and services, such as [Acquia Search](/acquia-cloud-platform/features/acquia-search/getting-started/search-sf) and [Remote Administration](manage/ra.html). 8\. Optimize performance ------------------------ When developing multi-tenant websites in a platform architecture, each website must use [both Drupal and Varnish® caching](/site-factory/manage/website/cache) to improve performance. You can improve performance by [modifying caching settings](/site-factory/manage/website/cache/modify) or by incorporating performance improvements, such as a [content delivery network](/site-factory/manage/cdn) like [Edge](../edge.html). To test the performance of your sites, you can use a load test environment. Load test environments have an isolated deployment of the infrastructure used in the production environment. Load test environments can be provisioned for minimum four weeks and traffic sent to such an environment does not count against subscription entitlements. Contact your Acquia Account Management team for pricing. 9\. Add and manage domains -------------------------- You should create a Unified Communications Certificate (UCC) and [provide the certificate to Acquia](/site-factory/manage/ssl) as you [add custom domain names](/site-factory/manage/domains) for your websites. 10\. Familiarize yourself with extended features ------------------------------------------------ Site Factory offers [extended features](/site-factory/extend), such as the [Site Factory API](/site-factory/extend/api) and [Site Factory hooks](extend/hooks.html), which can help to simplify and automate your development process. Several [monitoring and logging services](/site-factory/monitor) are also available to help you troubleshoot and monitor your Site Factory infrastructure and websites.