When to Use Aura Components, Lightning Web Components, and Lightning Runtime Components

At the end of the day, a Salesforce Experience Cloud site is ultimately a website. And user-oriented websites require a User Interface (UI) to operate. While Salesforce has carefully curated a variety of pre-built templates for administrators and developers to use, all Salesforce Experience Cloud templates are built using UI components in Salesforce-specific languages.

Common web development styling languages such as HTML and CSS can be layered on top of these components. However, contemporary Salesforce Experience Cloud templates operate heavily on their own bespoke languages: Aura Components, Lightning Web Components (LWCs), or Lightning Web Runtime Components. If you’re using one of the many pre-baked templates we referenced in Chapter 5, Understanding Experience Cloud Templates, but adding custom components or starting with one of the truly custom templates, knowing how these work...