Sitecore Tech Digest #4 - 2013-11-26

Hey everyone, time for another week of condensed Sitecore goodness.

CMS

• Jakob Christensen Posts A Video Series on SPEAK - SPEAK, the new UI for Sitecore is on its way and Jakob has recorded a bunch of videos to introduce you to the concepts and take you through building a sample application.
• PDF Thumbnail Handler Module Released to the Market Place - A new module has been released to the market place that allows you to get thumbnails for PDF's in exactly the same way you would an image.
• Sitecore 7 Computed Fields: All Templates and Datasource Content - A nice post showing you how to setup a computed field in the Sitecore 7 content search indexes that will index the content set in the datasource field of presentation components.
• Warning your Content Editors - A nice approach to informing your users when they need to set a datasource for a widget/presentation component that has been added to the page.

DMS / Personalisation

• Sitecore DMS in 5 Minutes: How to Create Goals - A quick run through on how to setup goals in the DMS. This is a good example of how to achieve quick wins with the DMS and start getting value with minimal efforts.

Automation / Continuous Integration / Delivery

• Continuous Delivery with Sitecore - A nice slide deck on one groups approach to continuous delivery with Sitecore.

Community

• Sitecore MVP Summit Official Photos - Marc Duiker has posted has official photos of the MVP summit.

E-Commerce

• Sitecore Acquires Leading E-commerce Vendor commerceserver.net - This week Sitecore announced that it bought commerce server .net. It will be interesting to watch where this goes and how tightly integrated the functionality will become.

Sitecore Tech Digest #3 - 2013-11-20

Ok so its post number 3 and I'm already a day late, my apologies, I was travelling and have just got back to the office.

CMS

• Dependency Injection with Sitecore - A god article introducing dependency injection and why it is a good thing, as well as showing you a way to use it in Sitecore. If you aren't using dependency injection, I recommend you look into it.
• Inside Sitecore 7: Seven Deadly Sins on Sitecore 7 - For all of you who missed the Sitecore Dev. Team's webinar around what not to do in Sitecore 7, its now available on you tube.
• Index users with Lucene in Sitecore - Have a large user base that needs to be searched/displayed on your website and the membership API's not cutting it? This post runs through an implementation of creating a Lucene index specifically for you users and how you trigger update etc. Its also a good read if you find yourself needing to index content that is not in the tree, as it shows how to hook in a custom crawler.
• A very simple media upload via URL - Want to give your users the ability to upload a file straight from the web, as opposed to from their computer? This blog post give you the code to create a field that does exactly that.

DMS / Personalisation

• Get better Insights with Sitecore Engagement Intelligence - Lars Birkholm Petersen runs through the engagement intelligence features of Sitecore, highlighting his favorite bits. An interesting read if you haven't't had a chance to look at the OLAP cub that is available for the DMS

Other

• Razl V2 Has Been Released - The tool by the Hedgehog team allowing you to visualise the differences between your Sitecore databases/environments has been updated and released. They are also hosting a webinar where they will demonstrate what it can do for you. 

Sitecore Tech Digest #2 - 2013-11-12

Ok so I made it to edition number two of the Sitecore tech digest. I didn't hear any screaming complaints and a bunch of people out there have looked at the site so here goes number two. Any comments or complaints, I encourage you to reach out.

CMS

• Sitecore Health Monitor and Best Practice Configuration Compliance Score Generator - An open source project aimed at providing a way to report on how good(or not) you site is. It also has an extensible provider model.
• Determine model from view with Sitecore MVC - A good strategy on how to tweak the standard Sitecore item based association between models and views and replace it with a code based approach.
• Sitecore Context Site Resolution - A good post on enhancing Sitecore site resolution to handle page editor and page preview modes in a multi-site instance where the authoring site may be different to the delivery site.
• Render Sitecore Content Item with name of language - A post demonstrating how to update the http request begin processor to enhance/change the default language detection approach in Sitecore. This example in particular is aimed at allowing first level pages to have the same names as languages, but the approach can be enhanced for other purposes.
• Perform a Virus Scan on Files Uploaded into Sitecore - An interesting idea put forward that suggests that we should scan assets being uploaded into Sitecore before accepting them. It also goes on to provide an approach to implementing a virus scan as part of the uiUpload pipeline.
• Sitecore for programmers: Part 2- The main concepts - The second post in a series by the guys at nonlinear thinking providing a good explanation of the core concepts of Sitecore.
• What is Sitecore? A developer's view of the CMS - Seems to be a week for introductory posts to Sitecore, here is another one aimed at introducing Sitecore to new developers by the guys at Box UK/
• Token Set Module Released to the Market Place - A new module that extends the standard set of replacement tokens available in your standard values items with a set of dynamic tokens.
• Package History User Guide - A cool module exposing information from the core database around what Sitecore packages have been installed, by who and when.

Automation / Continuous Integration / Delivery

• Sitecore Powershell Extensions Module - An update of the module has been released, check out the release notes on the Sitecore Market Place.

Community

• Inside Sitecore 7, Session 9: Seven Sins to Avoid in Sitecore Seven -The latest in a series of webinars by the developers of Sitecore.
• Sitecore MVP Summit in Miami - The MVP community for Sitecore is getting together in Miami this week to chat about all things Sitecore. So keep an eye on twitter for information leaks and more importantly, embarrassing photos of the attendees.

Sitecore Tech Digest #1 - 2013-11-05

OK so this is the first post and it is a hybrid of ideas. The first part of the idea came from one of my co-workers at Next Digital, who was wondering if there was a good source of information around what the community and Sitecore are up to on a regular basis. The second part of the idea came from a blog that I follow, The Morning Brew, and as a result this blog has been created. I am going to try and keep it up to date  on a weekly basis, but don't shoot me if that doesn't happen, this is a love thing, I'm not getting paid for it.

So, I'm sure your not interested in my ramblings, so here is what is new:

CMS

• Inside Sitecore 7, Session 8 Indexing Strategies: The Sitecore team have put out there latest in a series of webinars/youtube videos on Sitecore 7, this time focusing around the new indexing approach for Sitecore 7. It's also worth checking out the rest of the videos in the series.
• Sitecore 7:Workflow with more than a Comment: A quick post showing a way that additional values can be stored alongside the normal comment inside of Sitecore workflow.
• Adding two useful Shortcuts to the Sitecore startmenu: At first I wasn't going to include this post in the list today, but the more I thought about it the more I realised how much time this could save. It's a neat little post about adding content editor shortcuts to the start menu that link you directly to the core/master/web content editors, meaning you don't have to use the database selector anymore.
• Sitecore Caching: A post demonstrating how you can create you own custom cache layer inside of Sitecore, complete with event based clearing/refreshing.

DMS / Personalisation

• Sitecore Analytics: Display content by relevance using profile cards: A neat little post with an idea on how to select related content based on profile cards.

Automation / Continuous Integration / Delivery

• Continuous Integration & Deployment With Sitecore: Jason Bert from LightMaker has posted about the continuous integration and deployment process and tooling that they use. 
• Sitecore Instance Manager 1.2 introduces export/import feature and passwordless login to Sitecore: The instance manager module has added some new functionlaity and a new version. You can now import and export solutions with one click, you can also setup and emergency login procedure just by selecting a plugin.

Other

• Sitecore Developer Tool for Chrome: Here is one idea that's thinking outside of the box, updating chrome to make your development life easier. Once installed in chrome you get access to a bunch of shortcuts relating to the Sitecore site you are browsing, I'm trialing this one myself right now.
• Hedgehog's No Shave November: The team at Hedgehog Dev  (big contributors in the Sitecore space) have decided to keep the chins dirty with the aim of raising money for cancer. Keep an eye on them on twitter for photos and I encourage you to donate.

So that's the first digest, I encourage you to let me know what you do and don't like, if people read this I will keep it going, if people don't I will probably get bored and move on. If you want to suggest and article for me to include, post it to the wider Sitecore community and make sure its on twitter with the hash-tag #Sitecore