It is an exciting time to be a Sitecore developer these days now that Habitat and Helix are out to fill in what we all felt was missing from Sitecore all those years: patterns and standards. Sure, Sitecore has provided a lot of demos and tutorials but they’ve come up short in suggesting how to efficiently structure your Sitecore solution to minimize the development time and boost productivity – until recently.
What is Habitat and what is Helix?
More than a year ago Sitecore released a demo site called Habitat which showcases a Sitecore solution based on the Helix concept.
Habitat is a real Sitecore project built using the overall design principles and conventions provided by Helix. Simply put, Helix tells you how to structure your .Net solution and Sitecore tree so that they reflect what Habitat advocates: simplicity, flexibility, and extensibility.
What benefits do Habitat and Helix bring?
Helix preaches a modular architecture. This is quite evident upon viewing the Habitat .Net solution as the parts and pieces, that make the whole Habitat website, are stored in their own .Net projects. For example, the ‘navigation’ feature will have its own .Net project where all the necessary presentation files, models, controllers, pipeline processors, and configurations are contained.
Thru this modular approach it will be a lot easier for developers to add, update, and remove features since the scope of development does not concern one monolithic but a tiny .Net project representing a feature; thus, making the solution easily discoverable, highly adaptable to change, way more manageable in terms of growth, and of course, less prone to merge conflicts.
What does Habitat run on?
The Habitat project is currently based on Sitecore XP 8.1 Update-1 and requires tools such as Npm, Gulp, and Unicorn. If you’re already using equivalent tools there’s no real need to switch to the ones Habitat is using. Remember that Habitat is an ‘example’ site and that Helix is all about patterns, principles, and conventions; therefore, you’re free to use whichever tools you’re more familiar with in order to implement the concept in your own development.
Interested much?
Whether you’re a complete noob or a seasoned Sitecore developer, working on greenfield or brownfield Sitecore project, Habitat will definitely get you up to speed, so it’s worth seeing it in action before you dive in head first. But before you make your first attempt in installing the Habitat project I highly recommended gaining a significant understanding of the Helix concept first.
Recommended links:
https://oddeven.ch/blog/sitecore-helix-introduction/
http://helix.sitecore.net/
https://github.com/Sitecore/Habitat
http://habitat.demo.sitecore.net/
