Sitecore SXA CLI how-to: compile and minify CSS at the build server

During the last few weeks I worked a lot with SXA themes and the thing I was concerned about was: storing CSS/JS files in media library / serialization.

Well, there is nothing wrong with media library and it is extremely useful for distributed setups, but pushing compiled (or even minified) files to GIT just to make sure they will be added to the deployment package seemed painfully wrong.

Additionally, it caused merge conflicts when multiple people worked on front-end part of the site.

Luckily, it is not complicated at all to change that while maintaining typical delivery workflow. What we need to do is:

1. Compile / minify .SCSS into .CSS at the build server
2. Convert compiled file (i.e. *-min.css) into the .yml
3. Package .yml into update package (trivial with Sitecore Courier)

Sitecore Continuos Deployment: From Zero to Hero (Part 2: Deploy)

This is a second blog post in a Build-Deploy-Test series. Here you'll see how to deploy the package created at the previous step, with some hints specific to CI usage.

This blog post is a part of the series:

• Sitecore Continuos Deployment: From Zero to Hero (Part 1: Build)
• Sitecore Continuos Deployment: From Zero to Hero (Part 2: Deploy)

Sitecore Courier - Effortless Packaging

The first question many Sitecore developers ask when they start thinking about deploying changes with Sitecore is – “How to track item changes?” The deal is - you cannot simply deploy the updated site from version control system (VCS), because production site also holds content items, being constantly edited by content editors, and you need to merge it.