Self-serve curriculum
BigCommerce Developer Onboarding
Your onboarding, in two stages: first complete the Guided Coursework - BigCommerce’s official training, sequenced for Codinative - then work through Beyond the Courses, the essential topics that connect it to how we build. Both stages matter; do them in order.
How to use this curriculum
BigCommerce maintains excellent, certified training courses, so we don’t re-teach the platform here. Start with the Guided Coursework - it sequences those official courses in the order that works best for Codinative, and tracks your progress as you go.
Once the coursework is done, move on to Beyond the Courses. Those modules are essential too - they cover the customization surfaces, app building, Catalyst / headless, and getting the most out of the docs and their AI tooling - framed in our own words and linked to the authoritative BigCommerce documentation.
Guided Coursework
The curated order to take BigCommerce's official training courses - Developer Foundations, Stencil Developer, and B2B Developer - with your progress tracked as you go. The heavy lifting of teaching the platform is done by BigCommerce; this is the map.
Beyond the Courses
Essential topics to cover once you’ve completed the Guided Coursework - these connect the official courses to how Codinative actually builds.
Customization Surfaces
The low-level to high-level customization spectrum: CLI + SCSS/JS, custom templates, the Widgets API, WebDAV, the Code Editor, Script Manager, and Page Builder / Theme Styles.
Apps & Integrations
Types of apps, the OAuth install flow, app extensions, the Next.js starter app, channels, BigDesign, and publishing to the marketplace.
Catalyst & Headless
Catalyst (Next.js + React Server Components + Makeswift), fully headless patterns on the Storefront APIs, multi-storefront, and the WordPress plugin - what each is and when to reach for it.
Using the BigCommerce Docs
Navigate the BigCommerce docs efficiently and use their AI tooling - Ask AI, Copy as Markdown, Open in Claude/ChatGPT, Connect to Cursor/Claude Code, the docs MCP server, and llms.txt.
Git & GitHub
The practical minimum to work day to day: staging and committing, branches, pushing, pull requests, merging, resolving conflicts, stashing, and rebasing - with hands-on resources to learn from.