Meng Hak's Blog

A few months ago, I began creating a Sitecore Next.js guide for beginners. The goal is to provide developers new to Sitecore and Next.js with a comprehensive starting point. No foundation is complete without harnessing the power of GraphQL. The guide has now been enhanced to include: An introduction to GraphQL Understanding the distinction between Integrated and Connected mode Learning how to construct queries using the xGraph Browser Building a component that utilizes GraphQL to retrieve multiple Sitecore items in both Integrated and Connected modes Please check out the GraphQL section of the guide.

As the industry shifts towards a composable architecture, more Sitecore developers are making the switch from MVC to Next.js or working with Sitecore as a front-end developer for the first time. Transitioning from a monolithic to a composable architecture can be overwhelming, so I thought to create a guide to Sitecore Next.js for beginners. The tutorial will guide you on setting up a Sitecore XM environment locally using dockers, and get you started in creating your first component. This guide is purposefully simplified to not overwhelm the audience; it is intended for you to conduct further research on your own. While it's still a work in progress, I'm excited to share my progress and provide developers with a starting point. Please check it out: Sitecore Next.js Guide . Any feedback will be greatly appreciated.

When deploying in a single server environment, cold-starts and slow initial load times cannot be avoided as data needs to be fetched and caches needs to be built before the site can load up. To avoid this, many have gone with a blue/green deployment strategy in which one server is deployed to, warmup, and then swap. This allows for zero downtime deployments and no interruptions to your visitors. When utilizing Azure PaaS (azure web apps) for your Sitecore website, it is heavily recommended to utilize staging slots for blue/green and application initialization module for warm up. Recently, I've encountered an issue where the applicationInitialization seemly doesn't work; once the swap completes, we encounter cold-starts and slow initial load times. Our configuration is as follows: <system.webServer> <applicationInitialization > <add initializationPage="/" hostName="mysite.com"/> <add initializationPage="/page-to-warmup...