Do you know how to add a custom class using “new” text editor CKEditor? I want to add a custom "<p class="my-custom-class"></p>"
Sounds familiar? This is a common query which XM Cloud developers are grappling on Sitecore developer community channels, including Slack.
In fact, a quick search reveals an active topic as shown below:
What is CKEditor?
On May 8, 2025 Sitecore deprecated the legacy Pages rich text editor in XM Cloud. This was previously accessible from the right-hand side panel. The newer CKEditor rich text editor becomes the default editor. The link I have shared above provides guidance on how to enable the newer CKEditor rich text editor. This involves adding the env variable PAGES_ENABLE_NEW_RTE_EDITOR in the Deploy app and set its value to ‘true’.
supporting new markup (this was not possible with previous legacy editor)
*The image above has been adopted from developers.sitecore.com
But how do I add custom class to CKEditor?
With all these new capabilities and UX improvements, unfortunately you can not customize the CKEditor in XM Cloud (yet). As mentioned earlier, there seems to be demand for a capability to customize the list of the options available from the formatting drop down.
Makes sense to be able to create custom classes to be included in the list right?
Back to you Sitecore XM Cloud team.
What are other developers of XM Cloud saying?
Below are some of the answers to this question on Slack:
Next steps
Joined Sitecore Slack channel yet? Head over to https://sitecore.chat to join the community. In the meantime, stay tuned and please keep any eye on this feature request. Also please give us any feedback or comments.
Summary: Liz and Spyros gave a high level overview of the Sitecore XM Cloud Marketplace Apps, headlining it as “Extensibility Umbrella” comprising of a Public Portal and Developer Marketplace.
Session key takeaways:
Developers can now leverage the CLI, SDK on GitHub to build extensions to integrate with XM Cloud APIs.
Developers can embed features into Pages directly or creating standalone tools.
Developers can build applications that enhances functionality and streamline workflows
Spyros’s live demo of building a sample Marketplace App showcased that we can start leveraging existing the developer tooling right now to build the apps.
Session: Leading in the new era of AI
Hans Verbeeck (Technology Manager @ Microsoft)
Summary: Hans session covered the journey of AI to date, highlighting how things have changed from the early days of Scaling Laws that pretty much limited computing capacity. With computing capacity and storage readily available with cloud and data centres, Microsoft has made rapid progress with Copilots, AI platform and Agent Frameworks. He amplified the need to make a choice between Buy or Build in this new era of AI and he was leaning towards “better of Buying” or “consider Buying before Building”.
Session key takeaways
When it comes to AI, better of Buying” or “consider Buying before Building”
Think of what you can Buy first
Copilot is the UX for AI, Copilot is for Humans
Agents are for Processes
Sitecore Stream is AI-enabled capabilities with Sitecore products, that is underpinned by Brand-aware AI, Copilots & Agents and Agentic Workflows.
Sitecore Stream leverage Azure’s scalability, reliability, security, advanced analytics, AI and machine learning
Session: Lessons learned – 2 years after building our first XM Cloud platform
Derk Hudepol (Avanade CX Solution lead & Architect and Technology MVP)
Summary: In this session Derk took us through his journey with XM Cloud over the past two years at BDR Thermea. They had started small—with just one site—after building a solid core platform. From there, things really took off as they expanded to support five brands and over ten sites, adding features like eCommerce and search along the way. Derk also shared the lessons learnt and some tips and tricks working with XM cloud.
Session key takeaways
Have a solid basis for your CM Cloud solution
It is challenging to keep up with a continuously updating platform (XM Cloud)
Less is more, XM Cloud provided a lot better adoption compared to XP platform
Implement workflows from Day 1 for XM Cloud projects
Experience Edge comes with a lot of benefits, but also has challenges around rate limiting, stale content /cache issues and lack of Admin UI
Session: Building advanced RAG systems with Sitecore products. Putting AI assistants in Production
Sergey Baranov (Technology MVP)
Summary: Sergey’s session was a classic of how to get value from your data leveraging AI. In his well researched and presented session, he demonstrated how to unlock the potential of your data by transforming it into meaningful interactions with advanced Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) systems.
Sergey explored how to design advanced virtual agents using RAG, connecting LLMs with Sitecore tools like CDP, Personalize, and OrderCloud to create personalized, data-driven customer interactions, while also covering optimization, cost-efficiency, and quality monitoring
Session key takeaways
Know differences between traditional Virtual Assistants and Naive RAG systems
Understand Large Language Models (LLM) limitations when building RAGs, such as limited knowledge, hallucinations, no personalisation
Naive RAG versus Advanced RAG: the former improves responses of LLM responses, the latter improves the quality of RAG
GPT-40 mini is recommended for RAGs (actually always leverage mini versions in RAGs)
Session: The Future of Design Library for Multi-Site, Multi-Channel Content
Liz Nelson (Product Lead of XM Cloud)
Eirini Kalampogia (Product Director, Sitecore)
Summary: Liz doesn’t need introduction, but Eirini this was her first presentation. During the session Liz and Eirini shared how a centralized Design Library helps manage components and design across complex multi-site, multi-channel ecosystems. It improves consistency, streamlines workflows, and boosts developer efficiency through integration with client codebases, unified templates, and usage metrics—creating a one-stop hub for scalable, high-quality digital experiences. The session had a live demo that showcased identifying “duplicate” components with new Design Library – a common pain point marketers face today.
Session key takeaways
Design system is needed so that we can have consistency across channels, have visibility of components, with faster delivery cycles (and reduced tech debt).
Design library gives marketers autonomy they much so need
Design at scale is a smarter way to manage components
Avoiding fragmentations of components (marketer vs developer), code & no-code means better together
Look out for future announcements on Design Library and capabilities available within Sitecore products. Especially leveraging AI component generation, whereby a marketer starts component creation (no-code) and developer later takes AI-generated code and improves it. And marketer plays with it iteratively
The vision being “A single platform where devs build structure, marketers bring stories to life and AI scales the creative output across audiences and channels”
Session: Sitecore Stream in Platform DXP
Vignesh Vishwanath (Product Manager, Sitecore)
Summary: This was a session by Vignesh where he provided a full overview of the Sitecore Stream module within Sitecore Platform DX. He showcased the available features today as well what is in the roadmap.
Session key takeaways
Demonstrated Language translation with Stream Translate (which adds new item version)
You can use Stream with Content Structure, Content Auditing (review and suggest improvements)
You can use Stream for Image to Alt Text
You can use Stream for Component Generation (leveraging prompts)
Session: The joys and challenges of managing thousands of websites in a single Sitecore instance
Adam Najmanowicz (Developer)
Summary: Adam need no introduction. His session theme was basically lessons learnt, tips and tricks from the joys and challenges of managing a large number of websites in a single Sitecore instance.
Session key takeaways
Don’t run in integrated mode for XM Cloud
Servers are “cattle not pets”
Go headless node from the very start of XM Cloud projects
Reusability of content and settings is super important
Session: Better XM/XP deployments with Kubernetes
Peter Procházka (Sitecore Solutions Architect @ Accenture and Technology MVP)
Summary: Pete’s session was mostly lesson learnt and his insights using Kubernetes with Sitecore XM/XP workloads. He showcased Kubernetes and how it enables cloud orchestration and self-healing among other features. This session was more valuable for anyone transitioning from IaaS or PaaS, as Pete shared useful reference architectures.
Session key takeaways
Nice recap of what Traditional vs Cloud-based services workloads look like, IaaS vs CaaS
Local developer workflows and process to follow
Docker architecture, Image registry, Docker compose and override files
Why Kubernetes (with declarative vs imperative use cases) and pros/cons for either approach
Session: Synchronizing Sitecore XM Cloud Content with Azure DevOps
Robbert Hock (Technology MVP)
Summary: This was a fast-paced 15-minute lightning talk in which Robbert Hock(who needs no introduction) shared how his team addressed a common challenge with Sitecore XM Cloud: keeping lower Sitecore XM Cloud environments synchronized with production. I will point you to read more about it on Robbert follow up blog post. Robbert actually demonstrated his solution as well as the Azure DevOps CI/CD pipelines his team had built.
Session: Sitecore’s Marketplace roadmap review & Developer program
Below is a high level summary of other sessions I managed to attend
Session: Our Conversational AI future – Predicting the new web by looking to the past
Presented by Rob Coyle (Director of Product Design, Sitecore)
Summary: Rob session was on “a speculative future of Web and CMS” where he demonstrated concepts such as: “Show recommendations based on time to go home”. He explored futuristic use cases such as Content remixes and Agent rules.
Session: Unlocking Inclusivity – Alt-Text So Good, Even Robots Can’t Resist
Presented by Anna Pokorna (Ambassador MVP)
Summary: In this session, Anna shared how they leveraged AI to automate the generation of Image alt-text and metadata for their client. Thereby enhancing accessibility, SEO, and maintaining brand tone of voice. The solution was implemented over a year ago, well before Sitecore Stream was announced, highlighting Anna’s company forward-thinking approach as the industry now moves toward similar capabilities.
Session: Full Circle – The Architect of XM Cloud builds an XM Cloud Site (as a partner for the first time)
Presented Andy Cohen (Honorary MVP)
Summary: Andy Cohen doesn’t need further introduction — the founding architect of XM Cloud, was sharing his own story and experiences as he built his first project on XM Cloud—this time from a partner perspective. It was an interesting session that was well attended.
Session: Diversity in the Age of AI – Why It Matters More Than Ever?
Presented by Daniela Militaru (Senior Sales Engineer, Sitecore)
Summary: Daniela’s session was a group discussion in the format of a fire-side chat where the audience explored the vital role that diverse perspectives play in developing ethical, innovative, and effective AI solutions. Very engaging and great to see so many contributions from the engaged audience in this important AI topic.
Session: A walk-through of XM Cloud Content
Presented by Alistair Deneys (System Architect, Sitecore). I already covered this as part of the Key Product Roadmaps announcements in part one post.
Round up from Sitecore community
Below is a summary of related blog posts from our Sitecore community, whereby Sitecore MVPs, marketers and developers alike are sharing their key takeaways as well. Please note this list has not been presented in any particular ordering.
Overall, I observed a positive sentiment during this conference. There was positive energy and buzz throughout the event, and this was echoed in various social media posts as well. I have also provided a round up from Sitecore community for your convenience – I hope you get time to read through the blog posts to corroborate my key takeaways and feedback from other attendees. SUGCON Europe is a key event in Sitecore calendar and there is already talk about next year! We are also looking forward to SUGCON ANZ later in the year and Sitecore Symposium is back again in Orlando during November 2025. In the meantime, stay tuned.
Sitecore User Group Conference Europe 2025 has just concluded. It was held over two days in Antwerp city, Belgium last week (3-4 April 2025) and I was one of the lucky attendees. In this blog post, I will be sharing my experiences and key takeaways from the conference.
Firstly, I would like to thank the SUGCON organizers and the Sitecore community for making the event such a success. The choice of venue was spot on! Held in A Room with a ZOO – Antwerp, Belgium, the venue was most accessible via train seamlessly connected to the adjacent Belle Époque international station, which links to the European rail network. And right next to the Antwerp Central Station, the most beautiful station in the world. The food and hospitality were top notch, with variety of Belgian cuisine and desserts on the menu.
Secondly, the event schedule was the best you could have asked for. It catered for both developers and marketers alike, with keynotes from Sitecore leadership team, Sitecore product updates, great Sitecore community contents and demos alike. This year SUGCON also provided an accompanying SUGCON app to help personalise your sessions, keep track schedule and the room switches! Whether it was the usual ad hoc chit chat along corridors with other attendees, over lunch and dinner everyone was engaged. Including a Community Scavenger hunt app powered by Deckle, that kept everyone engaged and exploring the venue with many prizes won by those on top of the leaderboard at close of the event!
Keynote: Powering the Future of Sitecore Together
Dave O’Flanagan (CEO, Sitecore)
Roger Connolly (CPO, Sitecore)
Danny Robinson(CTO, Sitecore)
Keynote from Dave: This was Dave’s 4th SUGCON, and his first as Sitecore CEO. Dave shared stats that highlighted the key role our Sitecore community in success of Sitecore, such as 100+ user groups with over 30k members across 30+ countries, producing over 1k+ developer artefacts. Keynote was held in the “Darwin Room” which had a huge skeleton of a whale provided a great backdrop of his “Adapt” messaging. He reminded us, to echo famous Darwin mantra, that those who “evolve” and “adapt” thrive and survive. We are at what he called “The AI Inflection point”. His key message was he’s very much building Sitecore as an “AI First” company going forward. We will see marketing significantly change, let’s embrace the “The Intelligent DXP” built on a world-class CMS that is underpinned by AI (Sitecore Stream). With AI capabilities already being infused across Sitecore products and as AI agents are becoming more capable, Sitecore can deliver on their promises such as personalisation.
Keynote from Roger: Roger swiftly picked on from where Dave left and his messaging revolved around Content with Context will fuel the AI future. Content is King. Simple. He challenged whether “Is AI the UX of the future?” as we are seeing UX patterns shifting fast. With AI capabilities already being infused across Sitecore products, you can use Sitecore Stream with DXP 10.2+ and XM Cloud to generate content. As well as Contextual AI tagging and Visual Search in Content Hub which solves the metadata and retrieval main issues he sees within Content Hub. He also touched on the changing face of Search in the AI age and showcased the AI-powered A/B/n testing, personalisation and language translation tools available to us now.
Keynote from Danny: Last but not least, Danny shared his vision and roadmap with his key messaging also revolving around Innovating faster with AI. He re-emphasized Dave’s “Intelligent DXP” by showcasing how he is evolving the architecture for the future. He is also very much driven in improving developer experience by enabling developers with tools and SDKs they need. He sees this as ground-up, embedded AI capabilities, federated content, AI-powered site creation and bringing Sitecore Stream to all products. He promised that on June 4th, 2025 he will be making a significant future innovation announcement, so keep an eye on that date.
Key product roadmaps and announcements
Throughout the conference, we were given key product roadmap announcements.
a) Delivery on the promise, Sitecore Stream set of AI capabilities are available now.
Sitecore Stream in itself is not a product, but a set of AI capabilities that are already being infused across Sitecore products.
Available now on DXP 10.2+
Available now on XM Cloud
Available now for A/B/n testing/personalisation
Available now on Content Hub for Contextual AI metadata auto tagging and AI Visual Search
b) Sitecore’s Marketplace & Developer program
We had two separate sessions around Sitecore Marketplace. First session by Liz Nelson (Product Lead of XM Cloud) and Spyros Misichronis (Marketplace Architect, Sitecore) where they showcased the Sitecore XM Cloud Marketplace Apps, which she called an “Extensibility Umbrella” comprising of a Public Portal and Developer Marketplace.
Developers can now leverage the CLI, SDK on GitHub to build extensions to integrate with XM Cloud APIs.
Developers can embed features into Pages directly or creating standalone tools.
Developers can build applications that enhances functionality and streamline workflows
Spyros Misichronis demonstrated a live demo of building a sample Marketplace App leveraging the developer tooling.
The second session was by Krassi Eneva and Justin Vogt (Product Managers from Sitecore) who took a deep dive into more detail and showcased different use cases for Sitecore’s Marketplace and Developer program. Sitecore Marketplace brings the following benefits: faster time to value, flexibility & extensibility and growth & enablement.
Contribute to the community or build for your use cases. Sitecore is providing three models for this
Custom Single Tenant – Built for a specific organization & available right away
Custom Multi Tenant – Build for selected number of organizations & partner managed
Public – Available to any Sitecore customer or partner
What can you build? This is about what experience can you tailor for your end-users and not what type of apps. Scope is wide and covers creation of the following:
apps to the Sitecore portal
apps within XM Cloud
apps within custom touchpoints such as panels in Page Builder in context of a page, fields editor and panels within sites dashboard
Early Access Developer Program – Sitecore’s Marketplace Early Access Program is currently in progress and Sitecore is actively working with the following:
Technology Partners
Sitecore Partners
Internal Sitecore teams
Individual community members
Is this like an App store we are used to? Similar analogy if you like. You are responsible for testing your own apps, responsible for supporting them in the marketplace. Apps once submitted will undergo review process before approval to Sitecore’s marketplace
This was a major announcement that brings a solution to plug in gaps currently available in XM Cloud as result of moving from Platform DXP. They demonstrated cool apps like copying content between XM Cloud environments, leveraging third party content translations within XM Cloud UI among others. Interesting space to keep an eye on.
c) XM Cloud Content (previously known as “Content Service”)
Alistair Deneys (System Architect, Sitecore) session focused on showcasing the progress made with the Enterprise-grade, innovative headless “CMS” which we now know will be called XM Cloud Content. He set context by giving the brief history and evolution of CMS from the monolith old days, through headless and a look at the future as XM Cloud Content. He also introduced the XMC Content Architecture, diving into domain models covering the following:
Content Types define structure
Taxonomies define classification
Content is stored in Content Items
Fragments allow composition. He highlighted the preference for composition over inheritance in the design
He gave a live demonstration of the core set of APIs that underpin XM Cloud Content, walking through various scenarios on how you can build content using API-first.
Some of the key capabilities from XM Cloud Content are:
Entity lifecycle – Draft/Published/Archived
Worksets – new concept of publishing
Content Delivery – GraphQL endpoints includes tenant name. “IsDirectQuery=false” keeps query cleaner. Persisted queries, restrict query tokens to specific persisted queries, schema pinning
Fragments with composition over inheritance enables re-usability of set of fields thus a mechanism of delivering “system functionality and extensions”
Separate queries for “Pages” content, say, articles, news, etc
Query Token security enhancements such as disabling of Introspection
Content management capabilities: environment merging, availability & archive dates on content items, more field types, content collections among others
Sitecore Change Logs are running from XM Cloud Content
Developers will be excited with XM Cloud Content, although what was demonstrated is still in early development. Watch this space and future announcements.
d) Modernizing the JSS SDK and Starter Kits for XM Cloud
Liz Nelson (Product Lead of XM Cloud) and Christian Hahn (Technical Product Manager) unveiled groundbreaking updates to the JSS SDK and starter kits, designed to simplify workflows, eliminate legacy complexity, and enhance flexibility.
Welcome the “new” one. In summary, in the new solution
Split responsibilities
Only get what you really need
Reduce complexities and sizes
Some of key improvements shared in the session
disk size of the starter kit site folder reduced from 8MB down to 600KB
almost halving the bundle size
overall improvements in First Contentful Paint FCP metric of 200 milliseconds
editorial performance gains, with about 10x as many UI components can be added to an editable page
The SDK and documentation are available now, and currently in “Beta” but confident developers can start building new projects. Watch this space for announcements on the final releases which will be soon.
e) June 4th, 2025 – Future Innovation Announcement
Look out for an announcement from Danny Robinson(CTO, Sitecore) in June 4th
f) November 3-5, 2025 – Sitecore Symposium Orlando 2025
Sitecore Symposium 2025 is back and will be held at Walt Disney World Dolphin Resort, Orlando, the week of November 3, 2025. Ready to start your submission and step into the spotlight at Sitecore Symposium 2025 in Orlando, they are currently calling for speakers.
Key highlight sessions
With a total of about forty (40) sessions, it is impossible to attend them all. Below are some of my key highlight sessions that I attended. I will complete the list in a follow up blog post.
Session: XM/XP to XM Cloud Best Practices – Free Workshop
Summary: This was an early bird free workshop sponsored by Brimit which covered the best practices, decisions and considerations when migrating to XM Cloud. If you thinking of making the move, this session amplified what a migration path could look like. Sitecore provides XM/XP Migration Navigator as well and you can reach out directly to them.
Session: Optimizing your Content Hub development – Free Workshop
Summary: Another early bird free workshop sponsored by Brimit highlighting the productivity gains by leveraging Content Hub CLI in your workloads. A live CLI demo for developers and key takeaways in terms of best practices and optimising Content Hub DevOps journey.
Conclusion and Next steps
I observed a positive sentiment overall during the conference. There was positive energy and buzz throughout, and this was echoed in various social media posts as well. I look forward to reading and reviewing more feedback from other attendees. SUGCON Europe is a key event in our calendar and there is already talk about next year! We are also looking forward to SUGCON ANZ later in the year and Sitecore Symposium back again in Orlando during November 2025, with call for speakers now open.
GitHub Repo – Contains code samples and related artifacts referenced in this blog series
YouTube Channel – My YouTube Channel with videos accompanying this blog series
Enabling Experience Edge for Sitecore XM
In this blog, I will cover integration between Sitecore Experience Edge and your Sitecore XM instance. Below is a reminder of our architecture.
Recap on Experience Edge for Experience Manager (XM)
Sitecore Experience Edge for Experience Manager (XM) is an API-based service from Sitecore that gives you globally replicated, scalable access to your Sitecore Experience Platform items, layout, and media.
Sitecore XM + Experience Edge architecture, adapted from Sitecore docs
Experience Edge for XM acts as a publishing target for your Sitecore content and media, and provides a GraphQL API that lets you deliver “Headless content”, which will be consumed by the Mobile app.
You can request for a demo from Sitecore, by filling and submitting this form available on Sitecore website. Sitecore Support team will then get back to you with details on how to access your Sitecore XM cloud instance.
Alternatively, you can request for an XM + Edge Demo from the Sitecore Demo Portal page. This is the Portal where you can also request the Sitecore Play! Summit and Sitecore Play! Shop demos. The XM + Edge Demo will come configured with an Experience Edge, ready to go.
Below are the steps to use:
Step-by-step guide to obtain XM + Edge Demo
Logon to https://portal.sitecoredemo.com/. On the home page, click on “Quick Deploy”. This is the quickest way to get your demo instance based on Demo Team’s default configurations.
This will open a modal, from which the user can:
select a demo template
select an instance name based on the guidelines described above, in the “Choosing an instance name” section
select a demo channel with preferred demo version
select a region to which the instance will be deployed to
Instance names are valid under the following conditions:
The name must not already be used by another instance
The name must be at least 3 characters long
The name must contain only alphabetical characters or a hyphen
The name must start with a character (not a number or hyphen)
In case the name is not valid, or the name is taken, an error message will appear after the name has been validated by the Demo Portal API
Click on Deploy Now button to submit the information captured above
The Demo provisioning process may take a couple of minutes. Grab a cup of tea or coffee while this runs. Finally, you will receive an email notification from get[at]sitecoredemo.com, similar to one below.
You can follow the links in the email to access your instance. Alternatively, log on to https://portal.sitecoredemo.com/ and you will see the link on your dashboard
Accessing your Sitecore XM instance and Experience Edge instance
Opening your XM+ Edge Demo instance, you will get a landing page like one below
To access you XM instance, follow the URL in the section named Important Links This will open your Sitecore XM login page, and which you can access using the provided credentials To access your Experience Edge tenant, use the URL provided in the Edge Tenant section, plus the API key. You can see details on What is GraphQL in the other blog post in this series
Next steps
This completes this blog, where I have walked you through getting your Sitecore XM and Sitecore Experience Edge integration working. I hope you find this useful, and feel free to leave me any comments or thoughts.
