With many of our ecommerce clients considering or in the middle of making the move to Magento 2, our development team agreed that some high-quality training would be a great way of strengthening their knowledge of the framework.

So last month, we invited Jisse Reitsma from Yireo to IGOO, who gave the team a two-day training session on all things Magento 2.

Travelling from the Netherlands, Jisse provided a thorough overview of the platform’s front-end development, giving our entire development team a real understanding of what a migration to Magento 2 would really entail.

He covered multiple topics over the two days, including:

 

Day 1

 

  • Installation – Starting with the installation of Magento 2 itself, Jisse then guided the development team through the process of installing and managing third party packages. This included modules available via  Magento Marketplace and the importance of keeping up to date using Composer.

 

  • Layout XML – In Magento 2, xml is used to describe the layout structure of a web page. Jisse explained how to create and edit layout.xml files, to manipulate elements on the page and introduce new blocks for custom content.

 

  • CSS/LESS/SASS – With the introduction of css compilation, Magento 2 has a unique approach on how to compile CSS assets using LESS. Jisse demonstrated the compilation process and showcased alternative methods to generate CSS using SASS and different frontend themes.

 

  • UI Platforms – Magento 2 introduces a new concept not seen in Magento 1 – UI components. Jisse walked through the steps of integrating these components and how they are designed for reusability and extensibility.

 

 

Day 2

 

  • Progressive Web Apps (PWA) – Jisse gave some advice on PWAs, assesing the pros and cons. He then introduced the team to the  development of Magento’s own PWA Studio which, although is some time from being finished, will give the developers a starting ground for producing our very own PWAs in the future.

 

  • React – Tying in to PWAs, Jisse spent time explaining the possible introduction of the React framework to aid the frontend workflow, and how it could be used with a headless Magento 2 system incorporating GraphQL.

 

  • Performance Tuning – To round the two days off, the team looked at various ways of optimising a Magento 2 site, including full page and partial caching using Redis and Varnish, as well as asset minification and bundling.

 

The training was a comprehensive overview of the foundations of Magento 2, covering the most important aspects of frontend development to get a site off the ground in the most efficient and effective manner.

And with that extra bit of guidance under our belts, we’ll get cracking. Thanks Jisse!