This guide answers common questions about publishing and distributing apps.
Requirements to publish an application to a store:What are the requirements before trying to publish an application with appmefast?
To distribute an application on the App Store, you need to subscribe an Apple Developer account. The Apple Developer Program annual fee is 99 USD.
If you don’t already have an Apple Developer account you can subscribe your account here: https://developer.apple.com/programs/enroll//
This service needs Double Authentification. You have to create your apple developer account from a desktop and not from an Iphone or an Ipad.
Once you’ve completed your enrollment in the Apple Developer Program, you can sign in to App Store Connect with the Apple ID you used to enroll. App Store Connect is where you manage your App Store apps, see your sales reports, manage your App Store Connect users and testers, and more.
For more information about the complete process use the link below: https://developer.apple.com/app-store-connect/
To distribute an application on the Google Play Store, you need to subscribe a Google Play Developer account. There is a $25 USD one-time registration fee.
If you don’t already have one you can subscribe your account here: https://play.google.com/apps/publish/signup
The process of publishing:
Once I have built my app what is the publishing process for an IOS application?
I – The manual method
You have a minimal technical knowledge and you want to publish yourself your application manually. In this case, take the following steps:
1. First you need to generate in Siberian the sources code of your application.
Connect to your backoffice, select the concerned application in Manage > Applications by clicking the button on the right of the list. In the section called “Mobile Source Codes & Builds” click on “Generate sources“. Your request enters the queue and is going to be generated, then a link appears to download the generated sources code.
2. Then you have to use an Apple software called Xcode to compile yourself the concerned sources code in the aim of generating your application. Of course, you need to have a Mac to be able to use Xcode.
You can download this software here: https://developer.apple.com/xcode/
To find more information about how to use Xcode in aim of generating your application, please read this article:
Actually you can do that without a Mac computer but you have to emulate your computer to install Mac OS and then install Xcode on Mac OS. Here is an article about that: https://www.udemy.com/blog/xcode-on-windows/
3. Connect to your App Store Connect account to complete your app page with your screenshots, description, etc… Then click on “Submit for review”.
Publishing process for Google Play
I – The manual method
You have a minimal technical knowledge and you want to publish your application by yourself manually. In this case, take the following steps:
1. Connect to your backoffice, then select the concerned application in Manage > Applications by clicking the button on the right of the list.
2. In the section called “Mobile Source Codes & Builds“:
Owners of the Single App Edition: click on the button “Generate sources” and few minutes after your sources code is available for download. Then, you need to build your APK by using a Google software called “Android Studio”.
To build your APK with Android Studio follow instructions of this article: https://doc.siberiancms.com/knowledge-base/how-to-publish-manually-android-apps/. After building your APK go directly to the step 3.
Owners of the Multi-Apps and Platform Editions: click on the button “Generate Build” on the line Android APK and few minutes after your APK is available for download.
For owners of the Multi-Apps and Platform Editions hosted by us: click on “Request APK generation” in Service APK generator section.
3. Then you only have to follow the steps of this article in aim of publishing on the Play Store
The process to update an existing application.
I want to update an application that already exists on the Store. Do I need to publish again my application?
Note that there are two different things when we talk about “updating an app”: you can update the content of an app (adding a news, a discount code, an existing feature, the colors, etc), and you can update your application on the stores because you need to republish it.
In the first case, most of the time, you don’t need to update your app on the store and thus you don’t need to recompile it. Just change the content, or add the new feature, change the colors, and restart your app on your phone to see the changes.
But, if you change some other things that are native to the application like its startup images, its icon or its name, you will have to compile a new version of your app and republish it. In that case you will have to increase the version number before recompiling your app.
I want to update an application that already exists on the Store. What I need to do on the store concerned?
When you wish to update your application on a store there are some actions that you need to do on the store concerned before publishing your application.
How to set the version number before recompiling?
An app must be published with a version number. And if you want to publish an update of your app, you will have to change the version number for a higher one before compiling your application.
Note that there are two different things when we talk about “updating an app”: you can update the content of an app (adding a news, a discount code, an existing feature, the colors, etc), and you can update your application on the stores because you need to republish it.
In the first case, most of the time, you don’t need to update your app on the store and thus you don’t need to recompile it. Just change the content, or add the new feature, change the colors, and restart your app on your phone to see the changes.
But, if you change some other things that are native to the application like its startup images, its icon or its name, you will have to compile a new version of your app and republish it. In that case you will have to increase the version number before recompiling your app.
To change these values take the following steps:
1. Connect to your Backoffice.
2. Then go in Manage > Applications.
3. Select the concerned application by clicking on the edit icon on the right of the list. In the part “Device Information” you can enter the version number for IOS and for Android.
If your app is already published you have to add a new version number and send a new version number.
There are two numbers when you build an app:
– the version number
– and the build number
Because you can send many builds for a same version. If you want to publish an update of your app, you will have to change the version number for a higher one before compiling your application.
Note that in the auto-publish system the build number is not managed so you have to send a new version rather than several builds for the same version.My app is already published on store so can I rebuild it from scratch and publish it with the same name as a new version?
You can update an existing app.
The only issue can be for the Android version. When you publish an Android app you create/use a certificate named keystore certificate which has also an associated password.
If you have published this app by yourself you should have both the certificate file and its password (if you have used the APK Generator of your Siberian and you don’t have reinstalled your Siberian after having generated the APK of this app you still have them both).
If you don’t have these two items, certificate file and certificate password) you will not be able to update the Android version of your app but only to publish it as a new app.
For iOS there is no problem, you don’t need previous items to publish an update of an existing app.
