Sitecore Demo environment - A (hidden?) Gem!

A while back, I was in dire need of setting up a demo environment for an existing customer.

However, whereas in the past we would simply setup a local environment based on the most recent ZIP file that contained the latest Sitecore version.

Just attach your databases, change the pw, create accounts and then import the latest demo script / package that you could find.

However (and luckily) times has changed ;)

Nowadays we have started to embrace the whole of our composable and cloud-based platforms.

Which means we'll need to provision an environment, make sure we have a Head up and running, have content in there, we look at the whole picture and make sure everything fits together really well.

SO...

I went to part of the community, went to my peers, went to Sitecore and got the same answer every time:

Go to the Sitecore cloud portal and spool up a new environment. And that was what I had to work with... :

Which is a great platform... No comments there!

But this was not what I needed, I needed an environment that would allow me to choose between the options and capabilities Sitecore has to offer and set up a story.

It should hold some (kind of generic) images, assets, content and a story that I can bend to my needs. But due to time and other constraints, I made due with one of the SXA starter kits that one of my fantastic colleagues had deployed already and re-used that, in the hopes that it would not be changed during (or just before) my demo.

However, and honor to whom deserves it, after the demo (unfortunately) I got a mail from Ivan Lieckens with the following link: https://portal.sitecoredemo.com/ 

And this is EXACTLY what I needed anyway:

It has a button to see all demos set up for you, and a button at the top where you can spool up a new Demo for the platform you need, not just XM Cloud ofc:

I am not going to place all the steps here. That would add zero value, you can all figure that out yourselves. Also, I don't want to share what types of demos are in the platform, so that competitors can not look inside the box OR have prospects see what they might have seen or needed :)

However, since it was such a hastle in getting the right information eventhough I asked around, this simply had to be shared (again).

Hope it helps and saves you all the effort I had to put into it :)