What is the future of Scaffolding, and is there an alternative to Scaffolding that Adobe recommends?

[joyner100]

We are rebuilding some sites from older AEM versions to 6.4.  I see that scaffolding is supported in 6.4 but somewhat limited per the documentation that states "Although there is a Scaffolding mode available, the maintenance and creation of scaffolds as well as creating new pages from scaffolds is done in the classic UI. See Scaffolding in the classic UI authoring documentation for details."

My question is:  What is the future of Scaffolding, and is there an alternative to Scaffolding that Adobe recommends?

[smacdonald2008 · Accepted solution]

As the docs state - this is Classic UI technology. The entire purpose of this is for pages to share common structure:

"sometimes you may need to create a large set of pages that share the same structure but have differing content."

In AEM 6.3, 6.4 - site development has moved to editable templates that have the same structure and policies. ie - all pages can have same headers, footers, and common components. Then each template can have a set of authorable components. THen an author can then set the page with components that have been defined via the editable template policies.

Adobe recommends building sites with Touch UI, editable templates, core components, and HTL - as specified in this tutorial.

Getting Started with AEM Sites - WKND Tutorial

As you can see - in the new way of developing AEM sites, Scaffolding plays no role. In fact - with 6.4 - Classic UI should never be used.

Pages should be based on editable templates, not static templates or scaffolding.

[Jörg_Hoh]

I see a usecase for scaffolding, but I have never seen it been used at all (I recall that this feature has been introduced with CQ5 5.3). Your question is valid, nevertheless.

I see Scott's answer and he made the good point, that editable templates and XFs have the capability to replace scaffolding in many cases. Probably not in all cases. Even you don't think that these features are valid replacements for scaffolding in your usecase, you should definitely talk to support and explain your usecase, it can be forwarded to the product management then.

But if you have a good description of your usecase, we can give it a try here as well :-)

HTH,

Jörg