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Deploy a headless frontend

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The headless frontend you built is an ordinary Next.js, Astro, Nuxt, or TanStack Start app, so it runs anywhere those run. Acquia’s own option is Front End Hosting – Advanced: confirm the entitlement, take the golden-path app live in the quickstart, deploy a scaffolded Canvas Headless app, then production-harden it in the guide.

On Front End Hosting – Advanced, the deploy is a prebuilt artifact from your own CI/CD or Code Studio, equal alternatives: build, push the artifact to the Acquia git remote, trigger the deploy with one API call. Deploy code as an artifact is the same flow driven by hand from your terminal.

Wherever it runs, three things carry into production:

  • Credentials. Set DRUPAL_SITE_URL, DRUPAL_CLIENT_ID, and DRUPAL_CLIENT_SECRET in the deployed environment, and rotate them on the schedule in the auth guide.
  • Cache invalidation. A webhook from your site into your host’s revalidation endpoint is what keeps a cached frontend from serving yesterday’s content.
  • A domain and its certificate. Going live means pointing a domain at your host and issuing its certificate: see managing domains and SSL on Cloud Platform.
Front End HostingWhat Front End Hosting - Advanced runs, and how to confirm the entitlement on your subscription before your first deploy.
QuickstartTake your app from a GitHub repository to a live URL on Front End Hosting - Advanced, in any of the four frameworks, with a workflow that rebuilds and redeploys on every push.
Deploy a Canvas Headless appTake a Canvas Headless app live on Front End Hosting - Advanced: build a prebuilt artifact for Next.js, Astro, Nuxt, or TanStack Start, push it, deploy, and purge the cache.
Deploy from your own CI/CDDeploy Front End Hosting apps from the CI you already run - build in GitHub Actions (or any CI system), push the prebuilt artifact to the Acquia git remote, trigger the deploy via the Cloud Platform API.
Deploying a headless frontendRun your frontend in production on Front End Hosting – Advanced. Secrets, ISR mechanics, autoscaling, and platform constraints.
Go-live checklistThe launch checklist for a headless frontend on Front End Hosting – Advanced. Credentials, promotion, domains, caching, rollback plan, and monitoring, each linking the page that implements it.
Operate in productionDay-2 runbooks. Roll back a bad deploy on every documented deploy path, monitor within the platform's log constraints, and the rotation inventory for every credential the docs provisioned.

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