Latest articles

  • Automate your server updates with OPAS and get some sleep at night

    Automate your server updates with OPAS and get some sleep at night

    This week I got to see a demo of Infront’s Orchestrated Patch Automation Solution (OPAS). The software promises to automate away all the manual steps that operational staff need to perform to update servers and then validate that they are healthy after the update. This could put an end to the weekend work, or middle… Read more

  • Sitecore xDB infrastructure planning

    Over the last while my colleague Amanda and I have been collecting information to guide people through the upgrade to Sitecore 8 and plan for the new xDB. There are a lot of scenarios to consider and new scaling options available to you. Provided below are the collection of resources we’ve been able to put… Read more

  • Keystone: Errors with syncMaster strategy in hardened delivery instance

    Keystone: Errors with syncMaster strategy in hardened delivery instance

    If you are using Keystone 4.6 or earlier, you may receive this index-related error message after hardening the Sitecore content delivery instance: Could not find configuration node: contentSearch/indexConfigurations/indexUpdateStrategies/syncMaster Even if you have followed the SwitchMasterToWeb workarounds from Sitecore’s KB article, the error will not be fully resolved as the standard SwitchMasterToWeb does not contain any references… Read more

  • TDS “the package builder failed” after project rename

    TDS “the package builder failed” after project rename

    This is a quickie for anybody using Team Development for Sitecore (TDS) and encountering the mysterious “The package builder failed” error. In my scenario, the builder fails and informs you to check the build output log, but there are no build output log details. This makes debugging the issue rather difficult… The only resource I could… Read more

  • Creating interactive wireframes using Keystone

    This past week I was onsite with a client to review their site requirements and visual designs that had been created. My biggest focus was to try to determine how much additional effort would be required beyond what we could accomplish by implementing Keystone out of the box. Having talked through the wireframes and designs, we… Read more

  • Making it Work: Specialists on an Agile Team

    Making it Work: Specialists on an Agile Team

    In some lines of business, such as consulting, the organizational business goals require a certain amount of specialization in order to deliver to clients efficiently and with high quality. These organizations also typically bill by the hour, meaning downtime is a serious cost to the business. This can be difficult in an agile development model… Read more