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Showing posts from 2015

The Endlessly Rebuilding Sitecore Index

This quick post provides information about the sitecore_suggested_test_index, which I have found to be problematic in some large Sitecore 8.x implementations.

Sitecore Experience Analytics - Graph Cannot Be Displayed

I am an idiot. I'm writing this post in case you're an idiot too. It concerns a nasty looking, but ultimately harmless error in Sitecore 8's Experience Analytics screen that caught me out more than once.

Sitecore HTML Cache Doesn't Clear

Here's a quick one that might help if you have a Sitecore instance that is not clearing its HTML cache after you publish. I encountered this problem recently. The most confusing part was that it was only occurring on one of the two content delivery servers, despite them having identical configurations.

Sitecore Pipelines - CreateVisit

This post documents Sitecore's  CreateVisit  pipeline, and is part of a series providing information on  all the pipelines and processors in involved in a Sitecore 8 request . It's not a line by line account, but all the key logic is described.

Publishing in Multilingual Sitecore Sites - Reducing the Overhead

Have you noticed that when you publish one item in a single language Sitecore reports "Processed: 2"? Did you know that every time you publish, Sitecore secretly processes some items you didn't ask for? This is actually a feature designed to maintain the integrity of your content and that's obviously a good thing, but in practice I've often found it to be overkill. This post explains why Sitecore includes this behavior and should help you decide whether or not to disable it.

Sitecore Solr - One Core To Rule Them All?

Solr is fast becoming the preferred search technology within Sitecore. When it first became an option in Sitecore 7, I remember Google Hangouts and user group discussions about how Solr supported the ability to combine multiple Sitecore indexes into one Solr core. At the time I didn't understand the significance of this, but I now realize it's quite important.

Sitecore Pipelines - TrafficTypes

This post documents Sitecore's  TrafficTypes  pipeline, and is part of a series providing information on  all the pipelines and processors in involved in a Sitecore 8 request . It's not a line by line account, but all the key logic is described.

The Problem with Sitecore Datasources

That might seem like a controversial title for a Sitecore blog. After all, datasources are accepted as being essential for building successful Sitecore sites. Don't worry, I'm a strong advocate of using datasources. If they aren't central to your approach, then you probably haven't grasped just how powerful Sitecore can be.

Sitecore 7.5 SQL Session Deadlocks

Recently, I was getting this error in one of our Sitecore 7.5 instances: ERROR Failed processing expired items. Session type: d027da82-f6a4-4275-bb09-8bd3732d828e Transaction (Process ID 127) was deadlocked on lock resources with another process and has been chosen as the deadlock victim. Rerun the transaction.

Sitecore Explore Mode - Configuration

This post give's an overview of the configuration associated with Explore Mode (formerly the Experience Explorer) in Sitecore 8. It's the first in an  ongoing series taking a deep dive into this feature. For more general information, read my introductory post .

Explore Mode (AKA Sitecore Experience Explorer)

In Sitecore 8, the Experience Editor has an "Explore mode". It allows Sitecore users to impersonate visitors to their website, and provides an easy means of experimenting with marketing features to see how the site would behave in different scenarios.

Sitecore Pipelines - CreateTracker

This post documents Sitecore's  CreateTracker  pipeline, and is part of a series providing information on  all the pipelines and processors in involved in a Sitecore 8 request . It's not a line by line account, but all the key logic is described.

Sitecore MVP 2015

I have been lucky enough to be named a Sitecore Most Valued Professional (MVP) for 2015. It's an award given to those who have been recognised as making an exceptional contribution to the Sitecore developer community in the last year.