# How to Set Up Your answer.cloud Answer Engine

> Canonical source: [How to Set Up Your answer.cloud Answer Engine](https://www.answer.cloud/pages/how-to-set-up-your-answer-cloud-answer-engine-hosted/)

Choose a hosted Astro website or an AI companion for an existing website, then publish and verify the appropriate package.

Begin by choosing whether answer.cloud will host your full website or provide an AI companion for a website you already run. These are separate workflows.

## Host a complete website

1. Connect the official answer.cloud plugin through browser sign-in.
2. Select the intended organization and inspect available sites.
3. Build the website in Astro with useful content in the generated HTML.
4. Include the public site, CMS manifest, and private collection templates when the site uses CMS collections.
5. Deploy through the MCP upload workflow and verify the live site.

The platform generates the discovery files, text mirrors, analytics integration, and configured chat widget. Do not add duplicate widget or discovery-file implementations to the hosted source. See the [hosted-site guide](https://www.answer.cloud/docs/mcp-hosted-sites-hosted/).

## Keep an existing website and add a companion

Use an AI companion when the original website remains on its current host. Prepare the companion’s CMS collections and templates, then deploy the companion package through the documented existing-site workflow. See the [existing-site guide](https://www.answer.cloud/docs/mcp-existing-sites-hosted/).

If you connect a custom domain, use the exact DNS records returned for that site. Do not copy a CloudFront hostname from another organization or change the original website’s www record merely to enable analytics. Custom-domain availability depends on the plan.

## Measure requests on the existing website

For request-level agent analytics on a Cloudflare-proxied website, follow the [Cloudflare Worker guide](https://www.answer.cloud/docs/cloudflare-worker-agent-analytics-hosted/). Browser analytics and request logs measure different activity; many crawler requests do not execute a browser analytics script.

## Add chat to a separately hosted website

Follow the [widget installation guide](https://www.answer.cloud/pages/how-to-install-the-answer-cloud-ai-chat-widget-on-your-website-hosted/) for the current external embed and nested configuration. Hosted and companion pages already receive the platform’s configured widget, so do not install a second copy there.

## Publish content and verify it

Draft useful answers, preview them, and publish when ready. Verify the public URLs, generated sitemap and llms.txt, text mirrors, and a short grounded chat response. Connected Webflow publishing is a separate CMS destination; see [CMS Tools](https://www.answer.cloud/docs/mcp-cms-tools-hosted/) for its prerequisites.