AEM publishing Instance is rendering blank HTML

Question: I have recently created a site with CQ5.4 using the cq-quickstart-5.4.0.jar executable jar file. In my file structure, I have an author folder and a publish folder in which I am running my author and publish instances respectively. I have been able to make changes to the Geomtrixx site and see the changes reflected on the publish instance, so I know the replication is working. 

However, when I create a new site and “Activate” it (doing so through both WCM and the “Tools->Replication->Activate Tree” mechanism it shows in the UI that it was published. The logs also indicate that the replication was successful. However, when trying to access the pages on the publish instance, blank HTML pages are rendered. Oddly enough the pages are not 100% blank, they render with an HTML, HEAD, META, and BODY tag, but with no content in the tags.

Answer: I did Activate my content properly, however, because it was a new site, and I had generated new components and site templates which resided in the “apps” folder and assets in the “etc” folder, they were not available to be rendered and so the HTML page was blank (because they could not be found on the publish instance). What I did was use the “Activate Tree” under the Tools section to publish content in /content/mysite. What I missed was using the Activate Tree to publish items I had created in /etc/designs/mysite and /apps/mysite.

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