What is SXA: Tutorial 1

What is SXA, why to use SXA?

Sitecore Experience Accelerator (usually known as SXA) is a new way of building websites on Sitecore. The goal of SXA is to create a Standardized set of page Layouts and reused across multiple websites.


Key points of Using SXA:

1. Out-of-the-box Component library

2. Out-of-the-box local data-source support

3. Extended Experience Editor (Drag & Drop)

4. Wire-frame design

5. Helix-based Architecture

6. Increase productivity by Working in parallel

For example : the content author can start entering the content in the wire-frame environment, while the front-end developer works on the theme and the developer sets up the data templates.


SXA uses the following concepts:

Toolbox
Toolbox make it easier to construct your page design and reusable renderings that you can drag and drop toolbox component onto your page.

Grid and Column Layout
SXA pages use a responsive grid layout and grid divide the pages into equal column by using row and column splitters. You can decide how to divide the available columns on page Desktop, Mobile, Tablet and Extra Large Device.

Pluggable Themes
SXA separates the structure (HTML) from design (CSS) to make it easier to change the design of the websites. Usually SXA use the themes like wireframe or use your own custom. A theme consist of style sheet, script, images, gulp, sass and fonts.


Page design and Partial designs
Partial design contain parts of a layouts that a website uses in multiple places like Header Footer use on all pages of website. A page design is the presentation definition for a page and consist of partial design and reusable renderings.

Creative Exchange
The Creative Exchange process is designed to facilitate several different teams working on a website or you can export a static representation of a site and send it to a creative agency to work parallel with other team.

You can export your site and produce a Zip file with all the wireframe and all page content. And Front-end-developer can work with the static HTML Offline. When the designs are ready then this Zip file is sent back to be imported again.


In coming post will continue with concepts and demo…