Category: Sitecore
-
SUGCON Europe 2024 – Day Two
Day two of SUGCON did not disappoint with so many breakouts that there is no way to cover all of them! A few sessions had some nice photos from them so I’ve tried to collect these together here along with notes from what I could tell was being shared. You…
-
SUGCON Europe 2024 – Day One
Once again I had to enjoy a SUGCON from the comforts of home, but thanks to a few folks sharing photos I got to feel a little bit of the excitement of the event. I’ve gathered together some photos and notes from the community during Day One of SUGCON in…
-
Converting a Unicorn project to Sitecore Content Serialization (SCS)
Today I want to cover an important piece when migrating to XM Cloud: transitioning Unicorn serialization formats to the new Sitecore Content Serialization (SCS) format. In this article, I’ll walk you through some of the reasons for the switch, but mostly focus on the tools and process for migrating your…
-
Converting a TDS project to Sitecore Content Serialization (SCS)
Today I want to dive into an important piece when migrating to XM Cloud: transitioning from a traditional TDS (Team Development for Sitecore) project to the new Sitecore Content Serialization (SCS) format. In this article, I’ll walk you through some of the reasons for the switch, but mostly focus on…
-
Deploy Unicorn serialization to XM Cloud using IAR – A proof of concept
Sitecore has been pretty clear that the only supported option for deploying items to XM Cloud was using Sitecore Content Serialization (SCS) format. But people love using Unicorn and there were enough clues lying around that Unicorn might work? But I couldn’t be sure. To make my life as a…
-
Sitecore XM Cloud and Vercel Deployment Protection
Recently, Vercel made Deployment Protection the default for all new projects in Vercel. This is great news! This means that all your deployments will automatically be able to be secured with authentication, passwords, or trusted IPs. However, your Sitecore XM Cloud build might not be set up yet to work…
-
Sitecore Architect’s Guide to SaaS Migration – Classic XP with Simple Personalization
In this part of the migration series, I am going to look at migrating an existing Sitecore Experience Platform (XP) solution that has been built as a classic Sitecore MVC implementation with simple personalization implemented. The scenario breakdown: Follow the series to look at different Sitecore XM and XP scenarios and…
-
Remove your AddThis component by May 31, 2023
Oracle has announced that they will be turning off the AddThis service on May 31, 2023 which is going to impact a lot of websites around the web that have been using this for the easy social sharing icons that it provided. How does this affect you? From a Sitecore…
-
SUGCON Europe 2023 – Highlights shared by the community
On March 23rd, the Sitecore community kicked off SUGCON Europe in Malaga, Spain! I can’t be there this year, so I’m living vicariously through all the community folks who are being so kind as to post things online for those of us at home! I started off trying to capture…
-
Sitecore Architect’s Guide to SaaS Migration – XP Marketing Automation
In this part of the migration series, I am going to look at migrating an existing Sitecore Experience Platform (XP) solution that has implemented marketing automation, including email marketing. The scenario breakdown: Follow the series to look at different Sitecore XM and XP scenarios and how you can gradually migrate your Sitecore…
-
Who should I put on my project team?
Every now and then, somebody has asked me “what should my team look like”? Is there a formula for how you can structure a technical team to be ready for a Sitecore implementation project and then the maintenance afterwards? I’m sorry to say: there is no such formula. Every single…
-
Sitecore Architect’s Guide to SaaS Migration – XP Global Brand scenario
In this part of the migration series, I am going to look at migrating an existing Sitecore Experience Platform (XP) “Global Brand” solution, with many sites and deep personalization usage, over to Sitecore XM Cloud and Sitecore Personalize. The scenario breakdown: Follow the series to look at different Sitecore XM and…
-
Sitecore Architect’s Guide to SaaS Migration – XM Jamstack scenario
In this part of the migration series, I am going to look at migrating an existing Sitecore XM “Jamstack” solution over to XM Cloud. Follow the series to look at different Sitecore XM and XP scenarios and how you can gradually migrate your Sitecore platform solution over to a composable DXP…
-
An exciting day for me as the Developer Portal launched!
My team has been working on this one for a while, so I was really proud of the work done here to build a great experience for developers. It’s just the first version, but there is a lot we can do to make it easier and better for developers to…
-
Sitecore software downloads are faster and ungated!
Today on the Tech Marketing blog, I announced that Sitecore has made a big change to dev.sitecore.net. The downloads are now hosted via CDN, making it available globally at much faster download speeds than was previously possible. Along with this change? NO MORE ACCESS RESTRICTIONS! You don’t have to login,…
-
Sitecore 10 benefits for Content Strategists and Digital Marketers
Everything brands need to deliver and evolve experiences in a fully integrated solution. Adapt quickly based on contextual insights through Horizon and deploy data-informed updates or new experience elements faster than ever before. If you want a quick overview of the whole release, check out Sitecore 10 Highlights article. In…
-
Sitecore 10 benefits for Developers, DevOps and IT
Deliver more rapidly to accelerate digital experience success with new features — from container infrastructure orchestration to integrated data and marketing functionality. If you want a quick overview of the whole release, check out Sitecore 10 highlights article. In the following article, we’re going to drill down into the changes…
-
Sitecore 10 highlights
With the release of Sitecore 10 there are enhancements and innovations that help create efficiencies for both Marketing and IT teams – providing tools that help teams launch and evolve unique experiences that drive successful engagements. “With Sitecore 10.0, the focus has been on new innovations for usability, accelerated time…
-
Should I #DockerAllTheThings?
A while back I was in a discussion about whether there was a benefit for all organizations to adopt Docker. I was of the opinion that there are scenarios where it just wasn’t a fit. The more I thought about this, the more I realized that the benefits are always…
-
Sitecore and SameSite=Lax cookies
The SameSite cookie changes that seem to be breaking all those integrations on your web pages are intended to better protect against CSRF attacks. But does this impact the cookies that Sitecore generates? YES IT DOES! Read more on the Technical Marketing blog…
-
Should we host Sitecore on IaaS or PaaS? (Jan 2020)
This started as a question on the community forums, and my answer got so long I decided to capture it here as well. In general, when you are choosing an infrastructure model the first question you need to ask is what your team is comfortable having responsibility over, and what…
-
xConnect – Delete inactive Contacts from xDB
Starting with the Sitecore 9.2 release, the xConnect API added new API functions to delete information from the xDB. This allows you to make sure your data is cleaner, more relevant, and not costing you unnecessary data storage fees. Want to read more? Full blog on the Sitecore community site!…
-
Sitecore Symposium 2019 – So you think you can DevOps?
This year at Sitecore Symposium we launched a new DevOps track, with two rooms of sessions delivering what you need for day-to-day tactical solutions, but also bigger-picture, strategic guidance. Do you want to know how to deploy your code with Azure DevOps? We got you covered. Or maybe you are…
-
xConnect Upgrade to 9.2 – Where did the web request handlers go?
Recently, I needed to update my xConnect Tutorial from 9.0 to 9.2 so I could start looking at the new data purge API (more on that another day). I figured it should be an easy enough upgrade, my tutorial wasn’t doing anything complicated. Just some basic Create Contact or Register Interaction stuff. So, I…
-
Are you ready for the MongoDB 3.4 EOL?
If you are running Sitecore version 8.2.x, you are running MongoDB 3.4. Unfortunately, that also means you are impacted by the announcement by MongoDB that version 3.4 will reach end-of-life in January 2020. You have some options on how you want to fix this and it sort of depends on…
-
Preparing for AI-driven customer experiences
Digital marketers today are caught in the middle of a huge digital transition. Behind them lie the old, slow, and manual methods of creating content, connecting with customers, tracking engagement, and measuring the results. Ahead of them is the promise of the brave new intelligence-enabled world, teeming with possibilities—task automation, massive-scale…
-
Preparing your CMS infrastructure for traffic spikes
We’re living in the days of “going viral.” Consumers move faster than ever, and businesses need to be ready to respond to sudden demand the moment it arrives—or risk losing out to competitors. The right endorsement from the right person can generate global exposure and cause unprecedented numbers of people…
-
Mitigating CMS implementation risk
Prior to joining Sitecore as a Technical Evangelist, I worked as a consultant on many projects implementing Sitecore in various types of scenarios. The implementation is where things can really start to heat up! The stakes are high. More than that, implementation projects can also be long, costly, and susceptible to error,…
-
10 Content Editor Features for your new CMS
When looking at content management systems, there are several features that you need to look at for your content authors. The content editing team spends most of the time in the system, so they will be your number one customer of the CMS. This third article in the series covers…
-
Building the business case for a new CMS
The second part of a new series on choosing the right CMS system has published on the Sitecore blog! This second article focuses on the business case you will need to put together to get the approval for getting that new CMS. Read more on sitecore.com…
-
Warning signs you might need a new CMS
The first part of a new series on choosing the right CMS system has published on the sitecore.com site! This first article delves into some of the reasons you might be thinking you need a new CMS, and some other situations where you might be okay to just incrementally improve…
-
Getting started with Sitecore Marketing Automation
With the latest Sitecore 9 release, a completely new Marketing Automation tool is available for users to quickly plan and extend their automation activities with an intuitive drag-and-drop interface. Also, a new fully-scalable engine architecture is now available so that you can make sure to process new activities as quickly…
-
Evangelist Year One – a Retrospective
Just over one year ago, I wrote about a big change in my career as I joined the Sitecore Technical Marketing team to work as the North American Technical Evangelist. Over the last 12 months, a lot has happened, and in typical agile fashion I’m looking back at what has been…
-
Sitecore 9 xDB Sharding
Have you ever wondered what is going on with those new Shard databases in Sitecore 9? This is the new xDB! The new Shard Manager stores data based on the contact ID. A contact ID is a GUID identifier that is unique for each contact. It looks something like this:…
-
Scaling Sitecore 9.0 XP Services
The blog here has been a little quiet lately as I have started moving to creating content on the corporate site. I wanted to share something I worked on and has been posted on the Community blogs. Here you go: Scaling Sitecore xConnect and XP Services architecture In the linked blog…
-
Continuous Improvement for Sitecore DevOps
Did you miss out on my Montreal SUG presentation a few weeks back? Not to worry, I got your back! I recorded a run-through of my presentation and uploaded it so you can hear my thoughts on how we can continuously improve and invest in DevOps practices for our Sitecore…
-
Sitecore + SOLR + SSL
When you are doing local Sitecore development, you might need to setup a local SOLR instance to host your indexes. This is especially important if your project isn’t using Lucene indexes in production and you need to replicate the environment. When replicating production for troubleshooting, it is also useful to…
-
Continuous Improvement for Customer Engagement
Sitecore’s Customer Experience Maturity Model has been around for a while and it is still as relevant today as it was when it was first released. The model helps a team to understand where they are right now and where they could possibly be with customer engagement. However, it isn’t…
-
Meet Sitecore at MSBuild 2017 conference!
This year, Sitecore will be exhibiting at the Microsoft Build conference in Seattle. This will be my first time attending the conference and I look forward to getting the chance to meet so many of the developers in our industry! I have been working with the team to put together…
-
A new challenge with an old friend
Today I embark upon a brand new journey in my career. Excitement. Trepidation. Giddiness? Perhaps! Part of me is sad to leave my Nonlinear family behind, but I am so very excited about the opportunity to join Sitecore as a Technical Evangelist starting today. That’s right, no more MVP for…
-
Speaking this week at Toronto SUG
On Wednesday evening I’ll be visiting Toronto to speak about all the buzz about Sitecore and Azure. You should come on out and say hello! JOIN US to learn about #Sitecore #Azure Deployment and Personalized Promotions on March 29th https://t.co/xUWYgecT6Y pic.twitter.com/639giWwvnm — Nonlinear Digital (@nonlinear_DIG) March 23, 2017 To get…
-
The Sitecore Shibboleth Login module – SSO one header at a time
When you start using Sitecore as an intranet you inevitably must face the identity management scenario: where are the users who are visiting the intranet going to be stored? In most established organizations, a centralized identity management system is already in place. For a recent project, I came across the…
-
Sitecore 8.2 ProtectedImageLinkRenderer throws “Length cannot be less than zero” exception
I ran into this particular bug when upgrading a client to Sitecore 8.2 update 2. Whenever a RichText block had both a link to a media document (like a PDF) and an anchor with no HREF the processing pipelines that update the HREF links would blow up. For those who…
-
Sitecore announces 2017 MVPs
With a new year upon us, the time has come again: Sitecore has announced the 2017 MVPS! I was again honoured to see my name on the list for the fourth year in a row. You can see the full list of 2017 MVPs on the Sitecore MVP site. There are also…
-
Tenth day of Christmas… Women of Sitecore
On the tenth day of Christmas, my true blog gave to me… ten women of Sitecore! …nine sessions of training, eight tweets a-tweeting, seven VSTS features, six GIFS a-dancing, five Golden Rules! Four Community Sites, three Maturity Models, two Sitecore PaaS features, and Sitecore in a NuGet feed. Nick Wesselman said it well in his post asking…
-
Ninth day of Christmas… Sessions of Training
On the ninth day of Christmas, my true blog gave to me… nine sessions of training! …eight tweets a-tweeting, seven VSTS features, six GIFS a-dancing, five Golden Rules! Four Community Sites, three Maturity Models, two Sitecore PaaS features, and Sitecore in a NuGet feed. Throughout 2016, Akshay Sura and Mike Reynolds have been bringing unofficial Sitecore…
-
Sixth day of Christmas… Animated GIFs!
On the sixth day of Christmas, my true blog gave to me… Six GIFs a-dancing! …five Golden Rules! Four Community Sites, three Maturity Models, two Sitecore PaaS features, and Sitecore in a NuGet feed. SIDE BAR: I don’t care what the creator of the acronym says, it’s pronounced with a hard G… I like my Gifs…
-
Fourth day of Christmas… Community Sites
On the fourth day of Christmas, my true blog gave to me… Four Community Sites! .. three Maturity Models, two Sitecore PaaS features, and Sitecore in a NuGet feed. Community Docs Built by the community, this documentation covers everything from MVC to xDB to SPEAK: https://sitecore-community.github.io/docs/ Sitecore Community Forums Built by Sitecore,…
-
On the second day of Christmas… two Sitecore PaaS features
On the second day of Christmas, my true blog gave to me… two Sitecore PaaS features: Redis Cache and Azure Search! …and a Sitecore in a NuGet feed. With Sitecore 8.2 Update 1, the PaaS offering shown at Symposium 2016 became available on Azure Marketplace along with ARM templates and much more.…
-
On the first day of Christmas… Sitecore in a NuGet Feed
On the first day of Christmas, my true blog gave to me… Sitecore in a NuGet feed! One of the great things announced this year was the Sitecore public NuGet feed for Sitecore DLLs. This really makes managing Sitecore dependencies on a project a lot easier and makes life deploying…
St-Cyr Thoughts 