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Weighing the Benefits of Research & Development in Business

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Every business in every industry is constantly evolving. Every week a new smartphone is released with new features users have only dreamed of. CERN is identifying a new particle that rewrites history and causes Stephen Hawkins to lose a bet. Even Hollywood is…well. OK, not a good example. But nearly every other market is being reinvented by necessity and ingenuity at a lightening pace.  With each wave of change a business endures, there is a constant state of weighing the “old” way with the “new” way of doing things. Organizations have to evaluate each ti

Bit-Wizards SQL Execution Module for Kentico CMS

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Kentico CMS Is an extremely flexible and customizable platform to develop on. I have frequently created new custom functionality to enhance and extend the platform to accommodate the needs of my projects. I wrote this blog to detail a new module I created to allow SQL Execution within the CMS Site Manager. While Kentico provides a large amount of access to data and layouts, I found myself needing to update a stored procedure within the database. Without direct SQL Access, achieving that functionality is a cumbersome process of writing custom code to execute SQL, registering some web part or

Top 5 Things When Deploying Kentico CMS to Windows Azure

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Deploying Kentico CMS to Windows Azure is an excellent way to expand your site’s availability and scalability by leveraging a world-wide network of system and resources for minimal cost. Microsoft’s cloud platform consists of an integrated architecture of load-balanced web resources, redundant SQL Azure databases, and a globally dispersed Content Delivery Network (CDN). Utilizing these components within your Kentico CMS application allows your site to be hosted on multiple servers, with a redundant SQL backend, for minimal investment and effort. Wen configuring your site within Win

Kentico Tips for Every Project

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For the past 5 years I have been using Kentico CMS and was a fan from the very first project I worked on. Every release is full of features and functionality that make development and configuration a breeze. I thought this blog article would be on a few of the features / techniques I’ve used over the years and how they’ve helped produce award winning sites.Using the List featureIn many sites, there’s never a shortage of content to enter and display. When managing a couple thousand pages of information with the CMS Desk, listing and displaying them can be a challenge.

Creating a site using the KIM

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Kentico CMS provides a great utility for the installation and management of sites, called the Kentico Installation Manager (KIM). With this utility, you can quickly create new sites, download the latest hotfixes / upgrades, and manage your Kentico installations. While the Kentico Developer’s Guide does a great job of overviewing the utility, I wanted to dive a little deeper and give my thoughts on the site creation process. For this guide, I will be creating a .NET 4.5/VS 2012 site to run on local IIS and choosing a custom installation. 1. Installing your siteThe first step is to create

Error Restoring SQL Azure DB to SQL Server 2012

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Today I attempted to restore a SQL Azure bacpac file to my local SQL Server 2012 instance and got cold-cocked by a big, ‘ol error message: “ Internal Error. The internal target platform type SqlAzureDatabaseSchemaProvider does not support schema file version '2.5'. (File: [BACPAC FILE NAME]) (Microsoft.Data.Tools.Schema.Sql)” Looks like the SQL Server Data Tools team pushed out an update in December for the tools. A simple install fixed me up and I was able to restore my DB without errors. The update contains a number of enhancements to several parts of the tool:

Restore SQL Azure Database to SQL Server 2012

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SQL Azure is a great platform for hosting a database for your applications. You get a redundant SQL cluster and licensing is included for as little as $5.99 a month! I’ve built SQL clusters before and trust me, the cost a lot more than that! AS Microsoft continues to build out the platform and capabilities, more and more companies will adopt it for their applications. For many projects, you often will need a local copy of your database to test, build, and feel all warm and fuzzy knowing you have a backup of your data. With SQL Server 2012 And SQL Azure, Microsoft provides a great solut

Kentico and Windows Azure Questions – Part 1

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As a Kentico MVP and Microsoft VTSP for Azure I get a lot of questions from people on different aspects of the platform and how Kentico runs best in the cloud. Every project is different and the way an application uses Azure will depend on how it’s configured and functions. The great part about Azure is the ability to use the pieces you need to deliver the best experience possible. It’s the configurability that really makes it great! Here’s a couple questions I received recently on Kentico and Azure. I thought it would help a lot of people by putting together a blog of my r

Kentico Ask The Experts - Part 1 Recap

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The first Kentico Ask the Experts webinar turned out to be a huge success! It was a really great to connect with so many partners and help answer some tough development questions. And with so many experts on the call, even I learned stuff! Between Brian, Jeroen, Juraj, and I there’s not many areas of Kentico development we haven’t looked in to. With nearly 40 people viewing the webinar at one point, the session proved to be extremely popular and informative. Here’s a quick recap of some my favorite questions from the webinar.“What are some best practices for optimizin

Managing SQL Azure Databases - Code Camp Recap

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The South Florida Code Camp was a great event and an excellent opportunity for developers to sharpen their skills, see new and emerging technologies, and connect with other members of the development community. With over 800 attendees and 14 rooms for sessions, there was no shortage of great information and topics.  I presented on Administrating SQL Azure databases, a must for any developer looking to use Microsoft’s cloud for their applications and data. Developers in the session had great questions and comments that I really enjoyed. I was able to provide a thorough overview of

Kentico and Windows Azure Questions – Part 2

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In my first blog of this series I covered several topics related to Kentico CMS and Windows Azure. With more and more companies looking to adopt Microsoft’s cloud platform I realized there’s a lot of information to know and not many areas to find it. So to help the dev community out I started this series to hopefully offer some guidance and answers to some of tough areas when deploying to Azure. So, time for another round of tough Kentico / Azure questions!“What is the best way to manage session in Windows Azure?”Just as in any web farm scenario, deploying Kentico to Wi

Site Generation using the Kentico API

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Over the years I’ve been asked about automated site generation with Kentico CMS numerous times. Because Kentico’s extensive API is so accessible, this is much easier than people think. In this blog I’ll review some of the API calls to automate site content within a Kentico application.NOTE Most the examples leverage the “clone” method of objects. Almost every object in the system has this ability and it’s a great way to get all the properties of an object quickly to populate in your new one.Creating page templatesOne of the first steps in creating content i

Marine Scout Windows 8 App Root Frame Cert Issue

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After many, many, MANY months of testing and certifying, Marine Scout for Windows 8 has finally been released! You can check out the app here: Get The App!  There is a free and paid version. The Paid version allows you to share buoys, set “favorite” buoys, and removes the ads. I’ll be updating the Paid version with more features in the future. This was my 2nd Win 8 app, and my first for a trial / paid scenario. It also uses Bing Maps and the Advertising SDK. The total development time (not counting the recent submission time) took about 2 months to develop. OK.. so wh

How to add event attendees using the Kentico CMS API

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The Kentico CMS platform is one of the most extendable and usable APIs I’ve ever worked with. There is literally nothing I haven’t been able to do with, assuming it’s programmatically possible. For many projects we have leveraged the API to automate processes, enhance functionality, and create dynamic, feature-rich applications. This blog details using the API to automatically add attendees to an existing Event/Booking event.1. Make sure there is an event to assign the user to.The first step in adding an attendee to an event is to make sure there is an event to add them to. T

Kentico Web Farms Explained

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Every business website should be running a high-availability configuration, ensuring it’s always available and responsive to traffic. In order to facilitate this environment, Kentico has built in synchronization for web farms. This features keeps all servers updated as content / information changes within the sites. With the advent of Windows Azure and other cloud platforms, this functionality has been modified and expanding to handle the multiple deployment scenarios and dynamic architecture. This blog details how some of those changes work and tips on how your site should be configured

What You’ve Been Missing at Kentico Training Events

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One of Kentico’s greatest assets is its development community and the accessibility of information. From a dedicated developer portal (DevNet), to blogs from developers and MVP’s (Most Valuable Professional) like Brian, Jeroen, and myself, there’s never shortage of information to get the answers you need fast. Also in the mix, are a number of events Kentico hosts for the community, including the Ask The Experts series, webinars, and most recently, the Kentico Azure conference. Here’s a brief recap of these events and what you missed.Ask The ExpertsAs a developer, gettin

IE10 Adding Session to URL

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So recently we had a couple of our sites randomly having weird issues of injecting strange characters in the URL when a user browsed the site in IE10. At first glance I thought the values were GUIDs but after some great help form Juraj Ondrus (Head of Kentico Support) I discovered the values were in fact the session id. After a quick search I found that there is a known issue with .NET 4.0 and the IE10 User-Agent causing ASP.NET to not use your Set-Cookie settings for your application.What it looks like1. User attempts to log into the site using IE10 User browses to login page 2. User is re-

Kentico & Microsoft PunchOut for the Gulf Coast .NET User Group Site

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Running the Gulf Coast .NET User Group is one of my favorite activities and I’m always looking for ways to improve the group and generate interest. Whether it’s planning the next meeting and lining up an awesome speaker or adding new social and media features to the site, enhancing the experience for the group members is essential to keeping the group strong and relevant. I wanted to highlight how we are using Kentico CMS and Windows Azure to power an awesome user group site with many exciting capabilities. Body blow! – Built on Kentico CMSThe main focus of the GCDNUG si

Hosting a Custom Application Inside a Kentico CMS site

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Given how easy it is to configure and mold Kentico to your needs, hosting a separate application inside of the platform is fairly simple process and can make life a lot easier for developers. Leveraging many of Kentico’s built-in features within your custom app is a great way to extend functionality without having to do a lot of heavy lifting. This blog details a few ways you can use Kentico functionality within your apps with just a little configuration.NOTE For these examples I’m assuming your custom app is a folder Kentico root and its code is compiled with the CMS app.Security

Retrieving Attachment Info using the Kentico REST Service

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The REST service that comes with Kentico CMS is a great resource for any project that needs to extend the functionality of deleting and updating content through a programmatic interface. This service has a ton of great features that allow for content retrieval, document manipulation, and object data retrieval, all of which simplify interacting with the system from an external application. While we have used the service to return document information many times in the past, I recently had the requirement to return document attachment info, as well. REST Service to the rescue! This guide will
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