Let's build Sitecore Open Source with TeamCity

Over the past few years I've been focusing on applications life cycle as one of the key areas of my daily job. I've also spent some nights creating Sitecore PowerCore, Sitecore Courier, and many other build/deploy/test related tools. But one of the projects has always been postponed for different reasons. The project I'd like to share is a build playground which you can touch & feel, and it is built using my favorite tools:

• TeamCity
• Sitecore PowerCore 
• Sitecore Courier
• and some more

Packaging files with Sitecore Courier

It's been a long time since Sitecore Courier was released, I've got a lot of feedback about it, so now it's time to add the next major feature to it: files packaging support.

Initially, the module could handle only items, which was just enough for deploying item changes to your website on release day. But at some point I've realized that it can also replace standard Sitecore Package Designer, providing some additional benefits, which I'll list below.

(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.

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)