One Year Later: I didn’t just change jobs, I changed how I think about content

It's been a long time in this blog since the last post. I think it's a good time to wrap it up since I've left Sitecore and joined Sanity almost a year ago. I'm still happy to share knowledge about Sitecore when asked on Twitter or Slack, but for this blog it is likely the last post.

Many people have asked how is it going and how big of a change it was. Well, there are two parts to it, or maybe even three?

(Not so) Obvious Next.js / Vercel / Sitecore Horizon performance improvements

Sitecore Horizon is a modern way to visually edit Sitecore websites. Paired with Next.js and Vercel, it provides great editing experience.

But how does it actually work and what are the potential bottlenecks?

In a typical setup (without Next.js / Vercel), the data flow is pretty simple:

Sitecore on Kubernetes Tips and Tricks

If you're reading this blog, it is likely that you've already tried our Sitecore 10 on Docker locally and now wondering "how do I push this stuff to production?". As some would expect, this is not as straightforward and you can't just run docker-compose in production. This is why I've created this video: Sitecore on Kubernetes Tips and Tricks. I'm not going over setting up a cluster in Azure but I'll give some intro on how to connect and get started, some common issues and advices.

Let me know if you like this format in the comments below. If this video gets fair amount of views - I will share some tips on creating Helm charts for Sitecore deployments in another video.

Sitecore SXA CLI how-to: compile and minify CSS at the build server

During the last few weeks I worked a lot with SXA themes and the thing I was concerned about was: storing CSS/JS files in media library / serialization.

Well, there is nothing wrong with media library and it is extremely useful for distributed setups, but pushing compiled (or even minified) files to GIT just to make sure they will be added to the deployment package seemed painfully wrong.

Additionally, it caused merge conflicts when multiple people worked on front-end part of the site.

Luckily, it is not complicated at all to change that while maintaining typical delivery workflow. What we need to do is:

1. Compile / minify .SCSS into .CSS at the build server
2. Convert compiled file (i.e. *-min.css) into the .yml
3. Package .yml into update package (trivial with Sitecore Courier)

Sitecore SXA CLI tips & tricks

I've been working with SXA themes recently and came across this great blog post by Serge van den Oever on creating a custom theme for SXA using SXA CLI and wanted to share a few extra tips on top of it.

Automate Sitecore dev env setup with Sitecore.HabitatHome.Utilities

Having worked with Sitecore for more than 10 years, I always embraced automation in QA/Production deployments as well as development environments. Most of the projects had a nice little README that started with:

1. Make sure you have Sitecore X.Y Update Z installed
2. Install module X version Z and module Y on top of it
3. Run ".\deployDevevelopmentEnvironment.ps1"

Sitecore Content Hub + Glass Mapper = friends?

I've been recently exploring Sitecore DAM (Content Hub) module and installed it on existing website that used Glass Mapper. I followed the installation guide, configured all required properties, updated image field value to use the logo from the Content Hub and... nothing changed at front-end, the hero image was still being served from the media library.

Sitecore.com Continuous Deployment on Azure (2019 Edition)

It's been a while since my previous post about continuous deployment with Sitecore, lots of things have changed since then, www.sitecore.com is now hosted on Azure PAAS, the team is using Azure DevOps instead of TeamCity and much more. Over the past few years we completely revamped our deployment infrastructure and processes, and in this blog post I'll share how our current setup looks like after all of those iterations. Hint: it is now extremely simply and basically configurable in point-and-click manner.

Five things you should know before going live with Azure Search for Sitecore

If you're reading this post, you've probably configured (or about to) shiny new Sitecore 9.x production environment running in the cloud, with Azure Search as a search provider. Not having to worry about Solr Virtual Machine maintenance, Java licensing, etc. is appealing. But it is important to know that Azure Search comes with it's own nuances you might learn the hard way.

Work less, do more with Sitecore and Microsoft Flow

As a developer who works a lot on integrating different systems with each other I was extremely happy when Microsoft Flow got announced. I've started using it since the early preview and found a ton of ways it could help me automate some tedious tasks with no (or little) coding and be more productive with my daily job.

As a Sitecore developer, I also spend my time building websites on Sitecore platform and integrating them with different systems. It often starts with Save Actions in WFFM module - integrating it with online meetings platform, payment providers, CRM systems.

So what if we could integrate Sitecore with Microsoft Flow and make it the only integration provider you'll ever need? And let the service providers take care of updating their connectors in the cloud, integrating new systems with Sitecore without developers help at all?

Video about Sitecore Courier - basic usage and customizing packaging logic via filters

In this blog post I'd like to share a video which I've created several months ago as an experiment, and finally managed to publish.

The video consists of two parts: presentation and a small demo, in just 10 minutes you'll learn all you need to know about the module and see how to filter unwanted field or item changes by using filters.

Sitecore Courier is now available at Chocolatey Gallery

I'm excited to announce that the Sitecore Courier module is now available at Chocolatey Gallery - https://chocolatey.org/packages/sitecore-courier! This is the first Sitecore-related Chocolatey package and it also contains a few improvements to the tool.

From now, all you need to install Sitecore Courier is to type choco install sitecore-courier in command line or PowerShell console.

Path to Sitecore.Courier.Runner.exe will be added to the environment variables, so that you'll be able to run it from the command line as well.

One more thing - it will register a shell extension that allows easy packaging of both items and files. Try it out - that's a great time saver. Simply right-click any folder and choose "Package with Sitecore Courier" option. (You might need to restart your computer before this option appears).

That's it, enjoy! If you've got more suggestions on improvements - please report them here or at GitHub - https://github.com/adoprog/Sitecore-Courier.

[Pro]Active Sitecore Monitoring

When you hear the words "Application Lifecycle Management", the first thing that comes into your mind is likely Build / Deploy / Test workflow. But there is one thing which is missing here, and it is called "Monitoring".

Once you've deployed the website, you'll see that website performance may vary a lot depending on many known and unknown factors. They can be caused by both external (such as bot traffic, daily visits spikes, membership providers (CRM, AD) performance) and internal (different Sitecore jobs, scheduled tasks, automations, etc.) factors.

How do you know how the website performs? It's not something that you'll find in Sitecore logs, and it's not one hundred percent clear from IIS logs either.

Translating Sitecore with Smartling

Few years ago, I wrote a blog post about Sitecore Language Translator module, which worked using Google / Bing translations API. It was probably one of the first Sitecore modules which allowed automated website translation (even though it could be used only for testing). Since then, I've tried out a lot of translation modules, as website translation is required in at least 90% (just my rough guesstimate) of the projects where Sitecore is used.

That's why I was really excited when a friend of mine, who works at New York-based startup called Smartling, has sent me the latest version of their Sitecore Connector which I'll briefly (just showing off the most interesting features) review in this blog post.

(Auto) Configure your Web Server for Sitecore

In the past people used to install Sitecore manually extracting files from archive, setting up permissions according to the installation guide, etc. It sounds so wrong today, when we have PowerCore Deployment Framework, Sitecore Instance Manager, etc. But setting up website is not just about Sitecore deployment, if you look around, you'll see that you also need to configure the environment around it. And here's the simple way to do it.

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.

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