# Ship URL: /bengal/docs/ship/ Section: ship Description: Build configuration, SEO/discovery, output formats, and deployment --- > For a complete page index, fetch /bengal/llms.txt. You have a site working — now configure builds, validate quality, optimize performance, and ship to production. Note Do I need this? Yes for operators and site owners tuning production builds, SEO, deployment, or troubleshooting. New to Bengal? Start with Get Started (/bengal/docs/get-started/). Writing content? See Build Sites (/bengal/docs/build-sites/). Key Terms (7) Child Cards A directive (`{child-cards}`) that automatically creates a card grid from a section's child pages and subsections. Breadcrumbs A directive (`{breadcrumbs}`) that generates hierarchical navigation showing the current page's location in the site structure. Siblings A directive (`{siblings}`) that lists pages at the same level as the current page within their shared parent section. Prev/Next A directive (`{prev-next}`) that generates previous/next navigation links within a section. Show 3 more terms Related A directive (`{related}`) that lists pages with matching tags. Health Check Bengal's validation command (`bengal check`) that scans content, links, directives, and templates for errors before you ship. Versioned Documentation Serving multiple doc versions from one site — latest at`/docs/page/` and older releases at `/docs/{version}/page/`. Configuration Configuring Bengal with bengal.toml (/bengal/docs/ship/configuration/) Performance Optimize Bengal build performance (/bengal/docs/ship/performance/) Deployment Deploy your Bengal site to production (/bengal/docs/ship/deployment/) Troubleshooting Common issues and how to resolve them (/bengal/docs/ship/troubleshooting/) Validation Content validation and health checks (/bengal/docs/ship/validate/) ## Build Pipeline flowchart LR subgraph Input A[Content] B[Config] C[Theme] end subgraph Build D[Discovery] E[Content] F[Rendering] G[Post-Process] end subgraph Output H[public/] end A --> D B --> D D --> E C --> F E --> F F --> G G --> H ## Quick Reference I want to... Go to... Configure my site Configuration (./configuration/) Improve metadata, sitemap, feeds, and social sharing SEO & Discovery (./seo/) Add "Connect to IDE" button for Cursor MCP Connect to IDE (./connect-to-ide/) Build OSS vs Enterprise variants Multi-Variant Builds (./configuration/variants) Build for production CLI Reference (/bengal/cli/) Speed up builds Performance (./performance/) Generate JSON/LLM output Output Formats (./output-formats/) Understand DX hints (Docker, WSL, K8s) DX Hints (./dx-hints/) Deploy my site Deployment (./deployment/) Fix build errors Troubleshooting (./troubleshooting/) Validate links and content Validation (./validate/) ## Essential Commands BASH ``` # Development server with live reload bengal serve # or: bengal s # Build, then preview completed output with static serving semantics bengal preview # Production build (recommended for deployment) bengal build --environment production --strict # Fast CI build (parallel, quiet output) bengal build --fast --environment production # Validate content before building bengal check # or: bengal v # Clean cache and rebuild from scratch bengal clean --cache && bengal build ``` `bengal serve`keeps HTML, markdown negotiation, custom 404 pages, and live reload under Bengal's dev-server path. Static assets such as CSS, JavaScript, images, fonts, media, PDFs, and WebAssembly are served through Pounce's static file handler, so browsers get ETags,`304 Not Modified`revalidation, byte-range responses, and precompressed`.gz`/`.zst`variants when those files exist. `bengal preview`runs a complete build first and then serves the generated output directory read-only through Pounce static handling. It does not watch files, inject live reload, rewrite local development URLs, or serve pending generated artifacts; it is the local check for what a static host will receive. ## In This Section Configuration (/bengal/docs/ship/configuration/) Configuring Bengal with bengal.toml 5 pages Performance (/bengal/docs/ship/performance/) Optimize Bengal build performance 3 pages Deployment (/bengal/docs/ship/deployment/) Deploy your Bengal site to production 1 page Troubleshooting (/bengal/docs/ship/troubleshooting/) Common issues and how to resolve them 2 pages Validation (/bengal/docs/ship/validate/) Content validation and health checks 3 pages AI-Native Output (/bengal/docs/ship/ai-native-output/) How Bengal makes your documentation discoverable, navigable, and policy-compliant for AI agents and RAG pipelines Connect to IDE (Cursor MCP) (/bengal/docs/ship/connect-to-ide/) Add a one-click "Connect to IDE" button so readers can add your docs as an MCP server in Cursor DX Hints (/bengal/docs/ship/dx-hints/) Contextual tips for Docker, WSL, Kubernetes, and development environments Output Formats (/bengal/docs/ship/output-formats/) Generate JSON, LLM-ready text, and other output formats for search and AI discovery SEO & Discovery (/bengal/docs/ship/seo/) Use Bengal's built-in metadata, sitemap, feeds, social cards, content signals, and output formats to make sites easier to discover Related Pages Internationalization (i18n) (/bengal/docs/build-sites/structure/i18n/) Multi-language sites with gettext PO/MO, RTL support, and translation workflows Related Runtime Capabilities (/bengal/docs/ship/configuration/capabilities/) Enable self-hosted diagram, math, and third-party JS capabilities Related Analysis (/bengal/docs/build-sites/structure/analysis/) Site structure analysis tools Related Versioned Documentation (/bengal/docs/build-sites/structure/versioning/) Serve multiple versions of your documentation from a single site Related persona-operator (/bengal/tags/persona-operator/)