Publishing your app

When your app is ready, you publish it in one click: it’s online, over HTTPS, at its own .highwind.site address, open to everyone. You can then update it with each new version, or take it down whenever you like.

Publishing for the first time

In the editor header, click Publish. The Publish your app panel opens.
Choose your app’s Address. Highwind suggests one based on the project name: you can keep it or change it. The field shows the full address, for example my-workshop.highwind.site.
Click Publish. The panel shows “Building and going live with v3…” while Highwind builds and uploads your app, usually in a few seconds.
It’s live: the panel shows “Live · v3 · published just now”, and the header button becomes Published, with a green dot. Use the icons next to the address to Copy the link or Open the app in a new tab.

Choosing the address

Your app’s address looks like <your-address>.highwind.site. For the part you choose:

3 to 40 characters: lowercase letters, digits and hyphens, with no hyphen at the start or end;
some names are reserved (www, api, admin, docs, help, support…);
each address belongs to a single app: if it’s already taken, Highwind tells you (“This address is already taken”).

To change the address of an app that’s already published, open the Publish menu, click the Change the address icon (the pencil), type the new address and click Update. The app is republished at the new address; the old one no longer leads to your app and becomes available again.

Checks before publishing

Each time you publish, Highwind runs a few checks. If one fails, the Publish panel shows why.

Check	What happens
Building the app	Highwind builds the production version. If the build fails, the panel shows “Publishing failed” with the error message: ask the agent to fix it.
Database security (if your app has a backend)	Highwind scans your database’s access rules. A critical issue blocks publishing (“Publishing blocked”); others are listed under Security points to check without blocking.
Anti-phishing	Highwind checks that the app doesn’t look like a phishing page (impersonating a brand or an institution to collect credentials or payments). If it does, publishing is blocked; if that’s a mistake, write to the Highwind team.

Fixing a security issue

When publishing is blocked by the database, the panel explains that “The app’s database has holes that would expose its users’ data” and lists each issue, for example: Table “tasks” can be changed by anyone, even signed out.

Click Fix with the agent. The panel closes and the agent gets the list of issues to fix, without deleting anything.
Let the agent finish: it reads the database structure and adds the missing access rules.
Open the Publish menu again and publish.

See Database to understand access rules.

What gets published

Your project’s current version, the one the preview shows when you click. Changes made afterwards aren’t live until you update: see Updating a published app.
Your app’s server, if it has one (/api routes), with its secrets. See The app server.
A share image: when you share the link on a social network or a messaging app, the preview shows your app’s title and description (written by the agent in index.html) and a screenshot of the app. Highwind fills in missing tags without ever replacing your app’s own.
A “Made with Highwind” badge in the bottom-right corner of the app, with a small flag that lets visitors report a fraudulent app.

Every address of your app opens directly (including the pages of a multi-screen app), with security headers added by Highwind.

Thumbnails

After each version, Highwind takes a screenshot of your app. It’s used as the thumbnail of the project card on your dashboard, and as the share image once the app is published. To make it look good, polish the top of your home page: that’s what the screenshot shows.

Unpublishing

Open the Publish menu and click Unpublish. You can also do it from Project settings → Publishing → Unpublish.
The app goes offline right away. Its address stays assigned to your project: you can publish it again anytime from the editor.

Deleting the project also unpublishes it, and frees its address.

Reporting an app

Every app published on Highwind shows a report button (the badge’s flag). It opens the Report an app form on Highwind’s site:

a reason: phishing, scam or fake shop, malware, impersonating a brand or a person, illegal or shocking content, other;
details and an email, both optional.

The report only goes to the Highwind team, never to the app’s creator. The team reviews every report, and takes down apps that break the rules. See Acceptable use.

Why a separate domain

The Highwind platform lives on highwind.app, published apps on a separate domain, highwind.site. So a published app can’t read the platform’s cookies, and a malicious app can’t get Highwind blocked by browsers. Published apps keep being served even if the editor is briefly unavailable.

If publishing fails

Message	What to do
“The build failed”	Send the error to the agent (“publishing fails with this error, fix it”) and publish again.
“Publishing blocked: a critical security issue in the app’s database”	Click Fix with the agent, then publish again.
“Publishing blocked: this app looks like a phishing page”	If that’s a mistake, write to the Highwind team.
“A run is in progress: publish once the agent is done”	Wait for the agent’s reply to finish.
“Too many publications for now”	Try again after the time shown.