Check out the following workspace guidelines to ensure smooth development, effective testing, secure deployments, and minimal errors and breakdowns.

Understanding workspaces is essential for effective development. Different types of workspaces, such as Development and Production, serve specific purposes and should be used properly.

• Using development workspaces: Create a separate development workspace and switch to it before starting any development work. Note that making changes directly to the master workspace can potentially affect the user experience.

• [Store Framework] Developing a Store Theme: Before developing a Store Theme app, make sure the Store Edition app is installed in your account. Otherwise, you won't be able to use Store Framework successfully.

• App vendor: Developing a Store Theme or other apps using subaccounts is not recommended. This practice may lead to inconsistencies that will make it impossible to install the app in the production workspace of the main account. Always use a development workspace derived from the main account for such tasks.

In collaborative projects that involve different workspaces, be mindful of the development workspace you are using and ensure that code versioning is applied using appropriate tools, such as GitHub.

• Using workspaces: Never develop apps directly in the production workspace. This may break your store when the app is promoted to master.

• Code versioning: Use efficient code versioning practices to make sure changes can be tracked. This makes it easier to identify issues and revert changes if necessary. Use pull requests for proposing and reviewing changes, ensuring documentation and discussion to maintain quality standards.

From pre-production testing to implementing A/B testing strategies, learn how to maintain high standards of quality assurance throughout your development process.

• Pre-production testing: Before moving any changes to the production workspace, test your code in the development workspace and ensure all features are working as expected.

• Production testing: Once you are satisfied with your code in the development workspace, release a candidate version of your app. Install and thoroughly test it in a production workspace. Run A/B tests to compare traffic between these workspaces to understand which app version is best for your business needs.

Follow these best practices to deploy changes and promote workspaces seamlessly, avoiding disruptions to your live store.

• Checkout UI Custom: If your store uses the Checkout UI Custom app, ensure configurations are published to the new production workspace to avoid losing the Checkout custom Javascript code and styles.

• Core services data behavior: Be careful about changes in the VTEX Core Services via Admin, such as Catalog, Pricing, Promotions, Checkout, and others. Changes made to these services in a specific workspace are reflected across all others, as the workspaces share the same VTEX Core Services.

• [Store Framework] Site Editor behavior: Note that the Site Editor is always linked to the workspace, so changes made in a specific workspace do not reflect in others. The master workspace is the only environment where changes made in Site Editor reflect in the live store.

• [Store Framework] Updating live stores: When performing a major update on your Store Theme, check the steps outlined in the Migrating CMS setting after a major theme update guide to avoid loss of content.

The same treePath structure must be maintained in the new major, as changes to it result in a content loss in the Site Editor and potential store breakdown. If you need to change the treePath structure, make sure to configure the Site Editor again.