[SalesForce] Community : Salesforce Tabs + VF Template using Lightning Components

I have a community which uses "Salesforce Tabs + Visualforce" template. So, most of the stuff is customised using Visualforce pages including Login/Logout Pages.

Now, I'm trying to understand how can I incorporate the whole Lightning concept into this. As in, instead of Visualforce Pages I want to build Lightning Pages / Components so the pages load faster than before and get all the advantages of Lightining. (Yes, I'm okay to build everything from scratch, because the current community is pretty new and tiny).

Am I thinking right?

I started to try this out my self by trying to change the Login Page to start with. Earlier it is a Visualforce Page, now I want to change it to a Lightning Page/component. But I don't see the option below.

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Community Builder Page is for other community templates (like Napili etc), isn't it? Can those pages be used in Salesforce Tabs + Visualforce template? I don't think this is possible. Or correct me if I'm wrong!

This is where I'm struck. Help me understand!

  • Does this mean Lightning isn't supported by 'SF Tabs + VF' community here?
  • If I build Visualforce Page and use my custom Lightning components in it, I will lose the whole purpose of Lightning, because the outer layer is still visualforce page. Isn't it?

Best Answer

I'd question your underlying premise, Lightning isn't going to be any faster than VF+tabs, especially if those VF/tabs are using a third party library like Angular + Remote Actions to do their UI work.

At its core Lightning is another Single Page Application framework, its not magic and its not going to work any better with a custom built front end than a well regarded third party framework. Indeed you might actually suffer more given the maturity of the framework.

If you convert to Napali and go with a Lightning Community Template then you are going to get the benefits of having your components integrated with the Community Builder tool, but without that I'd give it a miss for production use.

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