Can HelixBase solution be used as a base solution for a brand new Sitecore project?

Question

I need to start working on a brand new project on Sitecore platform. I want to follow best practices that enterprise-level applications must have. I know there are couple of samples that can be considered like Habitat. But it is not preferable to use it as a base project.

At a similar line, there is one more code base named HelixBase which is at a more basic level and tackles some common problems when working with the platform. Thus, little curious to know, whether this can be treated as base project for the new solution and whether all additional requirement can be implemented on top of it?

Answer 1

If you read the readme.md on the HelixBase github account, that seems to be exactly what it is for:

A Sitecore Helix based solution which can be used for Greenfield projects. Tackles some common problems when working with the platform.

However, you should only use if you agree with the fundamental architectural decisions made:

• Are you going to use Glass Mapper or do you prefer another ORM/Wrapper/Native API
• Are you planning to use the MS DI Abstractions (Which is what Sitecore uses) or do you prefer a different container?
• Are your developers familiar and comfortable using gulp as a local development tool?
• Do you want to use Unicorn for item serialization or do you prefer TDS?

Those are the questions you need to answer for your project.

Answer 2

It is a great solution that can be used as a base solution in the new Project. I have used it but I have written few additional modules in the Foundation layer which I believe can be an oppurtunity of becoming contributor.

To answer your quesition on adding new modules then below are the some of the modules I have written in Foundation & Feature layers that can be reused in future projects

• Multisite
• Metadata
• Navigation
• Extended the Core project to make it more generic for error handling.
• Extended the Unicorn piplines of Serialization module for multisite token base configuration.

Only thing that you have to make sure that you follow the protocol to access the data from the repositories available in Content project of the Foundation layer.

Overall Helixbase solution can be extended to any level of the requirements and I hope, above would help you/others to get an idea that how much you can extend it.