Sitecore Reports as a Service

The project I'm blogging about today was started more than 6 months ago as a self-education sandbox for learning ASP.net MVC and a few other modern frameworks and tools.
It's not that large actually, but since I was rather busy and able to spend about one hour per week on it - it took so long to be released.

The idea is pretty simple: I want my Sitecore website reports to be available on the web to my iPad, iPhone or Android, in both visual and table format. Also, I don't want to install anything on my website and maintain it later. Ideally, I want to enter my credentials somewhere, and see the reports for all my websites immediately.

Let's review these crazy requirements one by one and create implementation plan:

Automate Sitecore update packages installation

Some time ago I've published a few blog posts about creating update packages with Sitecore Courier during build. This blog post is about installing them automatically during website deployment.

Source code used by Update Installation Wizard can be easily found using Reflector, but it's always easier to use ready and tested solution.

Making Lucene index smaller in Sitecore 7

With Sitecore 7, indexing is now extremely fast, but if the database is large enough, you may easily end up with 500+ megabytes of disk space occupied by indexes and index rebuild time might still be an issue, as well as a query performance. It might not be a big deal for a global website search, but if you only use Lucene index to find a few most recent articles, etc. - this can be an issue.

Sitecore Continuos Deployment: From Zero to Hero (Part 2: Deploy)

This is a second blog post in a Build-Deploy-Test series. Here you'll see how to deploy the package created at the previous step, with some hints specific to CI usage.

This blog post is a part of the series:

• Sitecore Continuos Deployment: From Zero to Hero (Part 1: Build)
• Sitecore Continuos Deployment: From Zero to Hero (Part 2: Deploy)

Sitecore Continuos Deployment: From Zero to Hero (Part 1: Build)

During the past year I've learned a lot about importance of Continuous Integration for project success. Besides of quality and robustness improvements, automated builds and deployment simply make developers happier, as there is now much less stress / annoying tasks, and more time for fun stuff.

Hidden feature of Sitecore Courier

It may seem strange, but there is one feature in Sitecore Courier module which I forgot to mention last time I blogged about it.

You can perform diff versus empty folder, in other words, simply turn a folder with serialized items into a package. It can be useful in two cases:

• When creating initial package with your website files
• If you want TDS-like "all inclusive" packages

Push Sitecore solutions to the servers with PowerShell and WinRM

It's hard to beleive it, but just a year ago I didn't even think about automating deployment of Sitecore solutions. It seemed to be impossible, especially for highly customized project I was working on.

With PowerCore framework, automated deployment can be setup in an hour, and it makes a great difference!

Mobile Device Detector - Feature Update

Just a small update on very popular module Mobile Device Detector - it got some new features recently:

1. Some bugfixes - thanks to everyone who reported issues

2. Easier installation: simply install the package, and re-publish content. No need to change web.config files, etc.

3. And, finally, 51Degrees Premium data file support. All properties are avialable. Don't forget, that free version includes only basic set of rules. Advanced rules do not work with free version (bundled with the module).

Yet another story about OneClick deployment for Sitecore

This blog post is inspired by "OneClick deployment for Sitecore..." post by Jan Hebnes.

I'll describe how to achieve the same result, but using slightly different tools. So, what are the options?

Automate your Sitecore website deployment with PowerCore

I'm trying to free your mind, Neo. But I can only show you the door. You're the one that has to walk through it..."

In this blog post I want to free your mind and show you that automated website deployment is extremely easy these days. Even when you have a web farm of hundreds Sitecore servers: if you can describe deployment procedure using checklist - you can automate it with PowerShell.