Quickstart: Build Your Digital Presence
Configure a site, build pages visually, AI-optimize SEO, set up editorial review, and connect your frontend — the full setup in 6 steps, in under 25 minutes.
Configure Your Site
| Field | What it controls | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Name | Site identifier in the admin | "Corporate HQ" |
| Base URL | Where the site lives | `https://acme.com` |
| Default language | Locale for new pages | `en-US` |
| Brand colors | Theme tokens reused across all blocks | `#0066ff` primary, `#222` text |
| Logo | Header logo (light + dark variants) | Upload via Media module |
| Header navigation | Top nav menu | Configure under Sites → Navigation |
| Footer navigation | Footer menu | Configure under Sites → Navigation |
| Robots.txt | Auto-generated; per-site override available | Default crawl-friendly |
| Sitemap.xml | Auto-generated; updates on publish | One URL per published page |
Build a Page with the Visual Block Builder
| Category | Blocks |
|---|---|
| **Hero** | Hero — configurable with image, video, centered, or split layouts via props |
| **Content** | Content block, Quote block, Callout, Two-column, Comparison table |
| **Visual** | Feature grid, Bento grid, Image gallery, Carousel |
| **Action** | CTA block, Pricing table, FAQ, Newsletter signup, Contact form |
| **Data** | Stats block, Timeline, Logo cloud, Testimonials |
| **Layout** | Section, Divider, Spacer, Tabs, Accordion |
Optimize with AI SEO
Before publishing, open the SEO tab in the right sidebar and click the magic-wand icon. AeionClaw reads your page structure and generates:
- Meta title (60-char target, keyword-aware)
- Meta description (160-char target, click-through optimized)
- OpenGraph image (auto-cropped from page hero or generated via AI)
- OG title + description (variants for social sharing)
- Schema.org JSON-LD (auto-detected: Article, Product, FAQPage, HowTo, etc.)
- Canonical URL (set automatically; override available)
- Keywords (extracted from page content + competitor analysis)
Continuous SEO monitoring: the AI re-analyzes pages weekly and surfaces:
- Pages where the title doesn't match search intent
- Pages missing structured data for rich snippets
- Pages with thin content (< 300 words on a topical landing page)
- Pages with broken internal/external links
Multi-language SEO via Aeion Localization — every translated page gets locale-appropriate title/description/keywords.
Establish the Editorial Workflow
| Stage | Who can perform | Triggers |
|---|---|---|
| **Draft** | Writer | Free editing; not visible publicly |
| **Review** | Writer submits; Editor reviews | Notification to Editor-in-Chief |
| **Scheduled** | Editor schedules a future publish | Auto-publishes at scheduled time |
| **Published** | Editor (or scheduled trigger) publishes | Live on the site; SEO sitemap updates |
| **Archived** | Editor archives | Removed from live site; 301 redirect configurable |
Share Blocks Across Pages
Build once, embed everywhere.
Global Patterns (Admin → Content → Layouts → Patterns):
- Save any block as a reusable pattern
- Embed the pattern on 100+ pages
- Update the pattern once → syncs to every embedding instantly
- Variants per locale / per site if needed
Common pattern use-cases:
- Hero banner with current promotion (update the promo, every page reflects it)
- Call-to-action footer (consistent across product, blog, support pages)
- Testimonial carousel (curated set of best testimonials, reused everywhere)
- Pricing summary (one source of truth, embed on pricing + landing pages)
typescript
// Programmatically embed a pattern
await aeion.api.patch(/v1/content/pages/${pageId}/blocks, {
position: "after-hero",
block: {
type: "pattern",
patternId: "pat_promotional_banner_q3",
props: {/* per-instance overrides */},
},
});
A/B testing patterns — Marketing's built-in A/B testing engine runs across patterns. Test two CTA variants; let the engine pick the better-converting version.
Connect Your Frontend (or Use the Aeion-Hosted Frontend)
Two paths to render your content.
Option A — Use the Aeion-hosted frontend (default). Aeion serves your pages directly at your configured domain. Zero developer involvement; SEO, performance, and CDN handled for you. Pages render server-side with React for fast first-paint + crawler-friendly HTML.
Option B — Bring your own frontend with the headless API. Fetch a page's block tree as JSON over Aeion's standard REST API and render it with your own components — no proprietary SDK to install:
bash
# Fetch a published page by site + slug
GET /api/v1/pages?where[site][equals]=corp-hq&where[slug][equals]=/pricing
```typescript // In Next.js getStaticProps / Astro server component / etc. const { data } = await fetch(pagesUrl).then((r) => r.json()); const page = data[0]; // page.blocks is an array of typed block configs ready to render
function renderBlock(block: { type: string; [key: string]: unknown }) { switch (block.type) { case "hero": return <Hero {...block} />; case "pricingTable": return <PricingTable {...block} />; // map every block type you use to your own component default: return null; } } ```
ISR / SSR / SSG — all rendering modes work, following your own framework's data-fetching conventions. Aeion sends content.page.published webhooks when pages change so your Next.js / Astro / Gatsby site can trigger a rebuild.
Integration Recipes
Marketing campaign → landing page. A Marketing module campaign auto-creates a landing page in Content (with UTM-aware tracking) for every campaign. No content-team handoff needed for routine campaigns.
Media library integration. Every image / video / asset in a Content block lives in the Media module. Brand-asset versioning, transcoding, and S3 / R2 storage are handled there.
Localization fan-out. Localization module auto-translates every published page into your configured locales. Translation memory + glossary ensure brand terms stay consistent. Manual review queue for high-stakes pages.
Forms integration. Embed a Forms block on any page — submissions route to the Forms module's submission engine + CRM auto-create on email match.
Aeion Search. All published pages auto-index into Aeion Search. Embedded site-search via the <SearchBar> component; full-text + vector + hybrid modes.
Aeion Claw on the page. Ask AeionClaw to edit pages on your behalf via chat: "make the hero headline more direct", "shorten the FAQ to 5 questions", "swap the testimonial image". It drafts the change, you approve.
Troubleshooting
Page doesn't show up on the live site. Check publish status — pages must be in "Published" state, not "Draft" / "Review" / "Scheduled". Also check site visibility (is the site in maintenance mode?) and any redirects that might be intercepting the URL.
SEO scores look off after publishing. AI SEO optimization runs in the background; takes 1-5 minutes for the first analysis. Re-trigger from the SEO tab → magic wand if needed.
Frontend SDK returns 404 for an existing page. Common causes: (1) page is not published, (2) site ID mismatch (default site vs. specific site), (3) slug typo, (4) tenant scoping (preview-token required for draft access).
Block changes don't show up in production. Check your frontend's ISR / SSG cache. Aeion sends content.page.published webhooks; subscribe and trigger a rebuild on your CI/CD. Or use SSR mode to skip the cache layer entirely.
Pattern updates don't propagate. Patterns update synchronously in the database. If a page still shows old content, it's the frontend cache — invalidate via your CDN's purge API or wait for the cache TTL.
Visual builder drag-and-drop feels laggy. Heavy pages (50+ blocks) on slow networks can lag. Switch to "performance mode" in the editor (top-right toggle) — disables real-time preview and only refreshes on Save.
Frequently Asked Questions
Navigate to **Content → Redirects**. Bulk upload a CSV of old → new URLs. The API resolver handles them natively at the edge — no SEO juice lost during migration. Per-domain + per-path rules supported.
No. Unlike WordPress / Gutenberg / Elementor which generate heavy nested `<div>` soup, Aeion outputs clean strict JSON (`{ type: "hero", title: "Hello" }`). Your frontend developers maintain absolute control over the HTML rendering.
Yes via the Global Patterns feature. Save a block as a pattern, embed on 100 pages, update the pattern once — all 100 pages sync instantly. Variant patterns per locale / per site supported.
WordPress: bigger ecosystem, heavier infrastructure, security maintenance burden. Webflow: nicer visual builder, but you're locked to Webflow hosting. Sanity / Contentful: pure headless, great for developers, weaker for marketers. Aeion: headless + Visual Builder + AI SEO + native CRM / Commerce / Marketing integration, all in one platform.
Yes — Aeion returns each block as typed JSON (`{ type: "hero", title: "Hello", ... }`); in your headless frontend you map every block type to your own component in a render function. Full control over markup, styling, and behavior; mix-and-match Aeion's built-in blocks with your own.
AI-generated meta is typically better than hand-written for two reasons: (1) it considers your entire page context, not just the title field, (2) it learns from your top-performing pages and reuses what works. Override anytime if the AI's suggestion misses the mark.
You assign existing roles (Editor, Publisher, etc.) as reviewers/approvers at each stage. The 5-stage pipeline itself (draft → review → scheduled → published → archived) is fixed today; additional custom stages (legal review, brand review, etc.) aren't currently configurable.
Yes. Auto-detected based on page content: Article, Product, FAQPage, HowTo, Recipe, Event, Organization, Person. Override on the SEO tab. Validates against schema.org standards before publish.
Yes. Every save creates a version snapshot. Admin → Content → Pages → Version History shows all versions; one-click rollback to any. Combined with Aegis temporal time-travel for cross-collection rollback.
Aeion-hosted: First Contentful Paint < 1s globally via CDN. Headless mode: same as your frontend stack's baseline (Next.js, Astro, etc.) — Aeion's API responds in 50-200ms typically. ISR + edge caching make it indistinguishable from static hosting.