1.2. Reading this documentation

Before you start venturing into a complete understanding of Helix – and particularly the reasoning behind it – it is a good idea to have a reasonable experience in developing in ASP.NET and in Sitecore. Although the Habitat example site works well as an end-to-end example of a Sitecore implementation – and as such is a good supplement to the Sitecore developer training – the added intricacies of the conventions can add to an increased learning curve of Sitecore.

However, if you are new to Sitecore and are determined to understand more about Habitat and Helix, please understand that although Sitecore is not generally conceived as hard to get started with, there are an incredible number of opportunities and possibilities to make your new journey with Sitecore both fun, interesting and sometimes challenging. Treat Helix and Habitat as just another one of these great opportunities.

Helix and this documentation do not define conventions or principles for all aspects of ASP.NET or Sitecore, but rather focus on the macro architecture conventions in Sitecore development. This means that you find that many of the traditional aspects of software development such as object-oriented architecture and ASP.NET MVC conventions are not mentioned in this document. In other words, despite the conventions and recommended practices in this document Helix still gives you great freedom in your choice of tools and general development practices.

Although the overall Helix conventions and principles can be applied to ASP.NET Web Forms, this document assumes the use of ASP.NET MVC with Sitecore. If you are currently working in ASP.NET Web Forms, the adoption of Helix might be an appropriate excuse to switch to ASP.NET MVC, as it is more future-proof and generally recommended for Sitecore development.

Although Helix is a set of recommended principles and conventions from Sitecore itself, it is not a set of rules. Development teams, businesses and requirements are different. Although there are great benefits to be gained from aligning to a defined set of conventions, there is also a need for pragmatism. The advice is to generally read all development conventions, patterns and principles – including Helix – with a critical mindset and apply them in the context of your own business, team and solution.