My Sitecore Next.js learning experiences and thoughts
Today, I’m bringing a useful collection of learning materials, especially for those Sitecore developers who are more backend-focused developers without React/Next.js experiences. If you go through these courses, videos, documentations, you should have enough knowledge to jump into your first Sitecore Next.js project.
The full-stack world
If you are a backend only Sitecore developer, I think you should start learning React/Next.js now. There are many new exciting Sitecore products and technologies available and Sitecore is moving toward the composable DXP world. Of course, there are still many Sitecore XM/XP projects out in the world and Sitecore is still releasing/maintaining our beloved CMS, there are more and more Sitecore Headless/Composable projects available day by day. On the other hand, if you learn some new technologies, you become a more valuable Sitecore developer on the market. And finally, It is fun! After spending ~10 years in Sitecore development, I really enjoy learning new technologies.
If you are planning to become a Sitecore MVP, this is your greatest chance. There are many new technologies and products around Sitecore, so it will be pretty easy to find a topic or specific problem which hasn’t been blogged by others at least 6 times.
React/Next.js basics
React and Next.js is something that is changing very fast. Based on my experience, it’s really hard to find some really good courses which:
- Describes the latest and greatest methods/approaches/techniques in React/Next
- The author keeps the course content up to date
- Easy to understand for developers who have zero experience in React/Next
As the first step, the official documentations are always a good starting point. Fortunately, React and Nextjs documentation is quite good, plus some tutorials are also available on the official sites.
- https://reactjs.org/docs/getting-started.html
- https://reactjs.org/tutorial/tutorial.html
- https://nextjs.org/docs/getting-started
- https://nextjs.org/learn/foundations/about-nextjs
As I mentioned previously, It's really hard to find a good video course. Fortunately, I found some pretty good courses on LinkedIn Learning.
- React.js Essential training by Eve Porcello (She is my favorite author, if you take this course, you will fall in love with React)
- Learning Next.js by Sandy Ludosky (This is also a fantastic course)
- TypeScript Essential Training by Jess Chadwick
Before you move toward Sitecore, I suggest practicing, practicing, and a little more practicing. Maybe try to build a simple site, a blog site.
Sitecore Next.js
Where to start in the Sitecore world?
- Official Documentation is a good starting point
- You can spin up your first Sitecore-Next.js instance by using the official template for containers.
- But if you want to see a nice, working demo site, find the Sitecore PLAY! Summit Demo site on GitHub. Study how it is built up, and try to modify, or implement your components there.
- If you don’t want to waste your time with local setup, to the Sitecore Demo Portal, and spin up a demo instance quickly.
- Spend some time on GraphQL too. It’s pretty fun to write GraphQL queries, and use them in your component. (Component level data fetching)
Fortunately, the Sitecore Developer Community is one of the greatest tech communities. Of course, you can find many many videos Discover Sitecore Youtube channel, but I would like to highlight one of them which was very useful during my learning.
- Scott Mulligan — Exploring Sitecore Headless Services and Experience Edge This is a great, clean, and easy-to-understand ~30 mins long video that demonstrates Sitecore Demo Portal, creating and deploying Next.js application to Vercel, and using Experience Edge.
You reached the end of this post and I hope you bookmarked some of the useful links and start learning Next.js.
I hope I can come back with some useful tips and tricks in this headless Sitecore topic.