Operations
Operations covers the post-launch work — getting a working sandbox, integrating with the publisher’s CMS, and the production launch checklist. Most operational mechanics are shared across solutions; this section calls out Publisher Commerce specifics around affiliate attribution and CMS embed maintenance.
What’s in operations
- Sandbox Setup — get a sandbox App ID paired with test merchants; verify the article embed + checkout flow end-to-end.
Operational mechanics shared with all solutions
Most operational concerns are universal across Firmly solutions:
| Topic | Where to read |
|---|---|
| Authentication patterns | Authentication |
| Error catalog and retry behavior | Errors & Conventions |
| Idempotency window | Errors & Conventions → Idempotency |
| Rate limits | Rate Limits |
| Production launch process | Going Live |
Publisher Commerce-specific operational concerns
| Concern | Detail |
|---|---|
| Affiliate attribution accuracy | Order metadata must carry the publisher identifier and article identifier on every order. Reconcile against the publisher’s own affiliate tracking weekly to confirm conversion attribution matches |
| CMS embed maintenance | When the Buy Now embed format changes (e.g., new SKU format), publishers must roll the change across all CMS embeds. Plan a CMS migration when versioning the embed |
| Article-driven traffic spikes | A popular article can produce concurrent traffic spikes against a single merchant. Coordinate with Firmly on rate-limit posture for high-traffic launches |
| Stale product references | Articles live for years; products go out of stock or change SKUs. Plan a periodic sweep to detect Buy Now buttons pointing at stale products and either refresh or remove |
| Editorial / commercial separation | Some publishers maintain editorial-commercial boundaries — articles that are sponsored vs. organically curated should be distinguished in attribution metadata if the publisher tracks this in analytics |
Related
- Single Product Purchase Flow
- Multi-Product Purchase Flow
- For Destinations → Going Live — the production launch checklist
- Errors & Conventions — error catalog and retry patterns