Developers are crucial for Sitecore ecosystem!
With a count of several tens of thousands globally, only
less than 15% of Sitecore developers feel confident with modern front-end tools. Resolving this bottleneck is very important as that slows down adoption of new generation of headless approaches:
JSS and
Next.js. This session is to show the
quickest but still effective path for converting typical existing BE skills into the new development paradigm.
I have prepared a session for Symposium 2021 and below is my paper submission proposal. Symposium speech gets backed with a several blog posts and "how-to" videos that highlight the whole path for typical Sitecore developers with minimal knowledge of JS to the state of competency with Next.js
Update: sadly, this proposal was not chosen, leaving me frustrated, as the described topic is very sensitive to the most of us - developers and solution architects. Therefore, I am leaving my
submission for historical purposes below.
The proposal
With much already said about the advantages of Next.JS with
Jamstack fast delivery by pre-rendering, we won't focus on that as it's well-documented.
Instead, session will mostly cover converting a typical developers' experience from purely back-end skills to the state of confidence enough to start building own Next.js solutions. Outside of it there's almost nothing that describes that the actual learning curve which raise high level of frustration: the gap is too big to fill without knowing a shortcut to success.
The session gets based on my own experience: being such a typical back-end person, I carefully documenting all the way down to the wonderful world of headless Jamstack: necessary steps and traps that may not be obvious for the target audience get explained.
The mission is simplifying switching to a new gen. of development for as much of typical XP developers as possible by:
- explaining the bare minimum of skills to obtain to be able using Next.js with Sitecore
- explaining how to set up the necessary toolset, solution, dependencies and the fastest approach for getting the knowledge
- briefly focusing on container environments being a part of overall experience
- doing all the above with the minimum efforts possible
- assuming the audience gets on a self-learning path after overcoming initial "studying gravity" with materials from this session
Speech Agenda
1. JavaScript
- most important changes since years jQuery ruled the front-end world
- starting with React: important basis to be used
- all you need to know about TypeScript using it with Next.js Sitecore solutions
- unobvious traps of front-end world to avoid
2. JSS
- mapping the terminology of old dev experience to newer counterparts
- explaining and troubleshooting GraphQL and layout service
- JSS Styleguide, DOs and DON'Ts
3. Containers
- brief introduction for those never had experience containers approach
- Next.JS starter template
- development considerations
4. Next.JS
- understanding pre-rendering options: static generation vs server-side rendering vs incremental static generation
- managing dynamic content with ISG
- routing / dynamic routes
- components rehydration
- client-side personalization via callback to origin
5. Development Experience
- understanding solution structure
- organize CSS on component level
- debugging and troubleshooting
6. Deployment and Going Live
- brief architectural overview
- is self-hosting the best option for your solution?
- hosting at Vercel
- Sitecore Experience Edge
7. Demo time covering some of Next.js features:
- image optimization
- error handling
- unusual API routes
8. Conclusion
- FAQs
- take-away materials
- further learning plan
Takeaway materials
By the time of the event, I am going to produce the following materials covering my presentation:
- A series of blog posts covering a topic much wider
- GitHub repo with a guidance and codebase from demo
- A series of short YouTube videos for each use case
Hopefully, once my submission get selected for either
SUGCON or next
Symposium.