George here for Day 2 of C2I, talking about a frequent question that gets posed:
Question: Why use Ignition?
It’s a good question. In fact, why use any accelerator at all? Isn’t Sitecore just ASP.NET?
The answer to that question is simple once you understand the underlying motivation behind the framework to begin with. Sitecore, much like many ASP.NET implementations, can easily be implemented to the point where “it works”. While that sounds good, maintenance or enhancements on a solution that merely “works” can be a costly and time-consuming nightmare. As consultants, we have seen a plethora of code that is easy-to-read, understandable, efficient, and most importantly, stable. We have also seen plenty of code that is a jumbled mess that do not follow any type of standard whatsoever. This is often the result of a revolving door of inexperienced Sitecore and/or ASP.NET developers resulting in patchwork code.
In short, Ignition is intended to help jump-start your code to be good code.
Numerous Sitecore MVPs and architects have provided valuable input in the direction of this framework. Since Ignition is open-source, using the Ignition framework will result in the culmination of some of the best and most experienced Sitecore minds out there. Additionally, we’ve ensured that all the features and functionality of the Sitecore platform have not been compromised including the Experience Editor, xDB, and personalization. We’ve taken a lot of care to ensure that proper industry-standard best practices are followed and abstracted so you can focus on delivering a high quality solution without needing to design a solution architecture from ground up.
If your team is newer to Sitecore or you’re looking for a better way to structure your code and your content in a sustainable, simple, and clean manner that supports and enhances the marketing features of Sitecore, then Ignition might be just what you need. It’s a lot of work to put together a reusable platform that is both easy to use and powerful enough to be flexible. We strive to do both with Ignition and let you focus the effort on your implementations instead of your architecture.
If you’re going to New Orleans for Sitecore Symposium, come visit us at the Perficient booth! We’ll be glad to discuss more about Ignition and how it can help result in a quality Sitecore implementation!
