Sitecore 9 new features

• Sitecore 9 is a major new release with new features and brand new framework.
• Sitecore requirement: Win Server 2016/ 12 R2 / Win 10 /8.1 IIS 8.5 / 10 .Net Framework 4.5 + SQL server 2016 / 2014 SP2 for XM or CMS mode. Mongo DB  + Cosmos DB (future release)
• Solr 6.6 and Azure Search
• Silverlight is not supported
• Sitecore 9 is secure out of the Box (HTTP's enabled)
• Sitecore Installation framework (SIF) for sitecore installation. 
• SIM is not supported in Sitecore 9.
• Solr or Azure Search support (for xConnect)
• Search API feature ( Highlight, Spellcheck, Suggest etc)
• Config Load Order – Customize your order of loading component.
• New Rule-based configuration 
• Support for Federated Authentication (FB, Google, MS, OpenID, AzureAD, Twitter, SAML custom Auth.
• Support for Custom Roles
• Dynamic Placeholders (most wanted feature)
• xConnect - is the service layer that sits in between the xDB and any trusted client, device, or interface Ref: https://doc.sitecore.net/developers/xp/xconnect/xconnect-overview/index.html
• WFFM is dead (but will be supported till Sitecore 9)
• Newly designed web forms, scalable e-mail marketing, and rich automation for marketers
• New Marketing Automation UI / Dashboard
• Speak 3 is based on Angular JS.
• Support for Live Events
• JavaScript Service (JSS) is a newly introduced feature– Powerful headless capabilities for front-end developer, personalization. 
• JSS is based on JS/ NodeJS/ Json, Custom JS Controller.
• JSS feature is under Tech Preview.
• New Experience editor.
• Support for device detection
• New documentation site–
• https://doc.sitecore.net/developers/ 
• https://jss.sitecore.net/
• http://helix.sitecore.net/
• Future release – Sitecore Cortex / Zenith / Commerce 9 / SXA Storefront
• Sitecore 6 & 7 Support is Discontinued.

I have summarized one-pager details of new Sitecore 9 features. Hope this might be helpful. Please feel free to provide your feedback/comments.

Job Viewer page for CMS

Job Viewer page for CMS to view all current jobs.

Path : https://github.com/prakashrpatel/CMSJobViewer/blob/master/Job.aspx

Sitecore Tips: To Save time disable Sitecore cache and browser cache during development

Sitecore: To Save time disable Sitecore cache and browser cache during development

Cache is required for better performance of application.

During development stage, it is always suggested to disable Sitecore cache and also browser cache to avoid wasting time in recycling application pool or clearing cache from cache admin. To disable it, 

      <!--  CACHING ENABLED

            Determines if caching should be enabled at all

            Specify 'true' to enable caching and 'false' to disable all caching

      -->

      <setting name="Caching.Enabled" value="true" />

      <!--  DISABLE BROWSER CACHING

            If true, all pages will have:

              Cache-Control: no-cache, no-store

              Pragma: no-cache

            in the http header

      -->

      <setting name="DisableBrowserCaching" value="true" />

Both the setting should be true; former to avoid Sitecore cache and latter to BrowserCache.

Improving performance of Application startup in Sitecore 8+

Improving performance of Application startup in Sitecore 8+

Disable the precompilation of SPEAK components: 

• Comment out this part of the
• Website\App_Config\Include\Sitecore.Speak.config file:
• <initialize>
  <processor type="Sitecore.Pipelines.Initialize.PrecompileSpeakViews, Sitecore.Speak.Client">
  <Paths>/sitecore/shell/client/Business Component Library</Paths>
  </processor>
  </initialize>
• Comment out this part of the 
• Website\App_Config\Include\ContentTesting\ Sitecore.ContentTesting.config file: <processor type="Sitecore.Pipelines.Initialize.PrecompileSpeakViews, Sitecore.Speak.Client" use="ContentTesting">
• <Paths>/sitecore/shell/client/Applications/ContentTesting</Paths>
  </processor>

Publish Queue, History and Event Queue too big

Publish Queue, History and Event Queue too big

Existing CMS users are unable to publish content on Sitecore.

Syntax:

/* TRUNCATE History TABLE */
IF OBJECT_ID('History', 'U') IS NOT NULL
IF((SELECT COUNT(*) FROM [History]) > 1000)
BEGIN
TRUNCATE TABLE [History];
PRINT 'Truncated the History Table';
END
/* TRUNCATE EventQueue TABLE */
IF OBJECT_ID('EventQueue', 'U') IS NOT NULL
if((SELECT COUNT(*) FROM [EventQueue]) > 1000)
BEGIN
TRUNCATE TABLE [EventQueue];
PRINT 'Truncated the EventQueue Table';
END
/* TRUNCATE PublishQueue TABLE */
IF OBJECT_ID('PublishQueue', 'U') IS NOT NULL
IF((SELECT COUNT(*) FROM [PublishQueue]) > 1000)
BEGIN
TRUNCATE TABLE [PublishQueue];
PRINT 'Truncated the PublishQueue Table';
END

Enable / Disable application access to users.

Enable / Disable application access to users.

If you do not want editors to be able to access the Page Editor at all, you can restrict access to the Page Editor buttons in the core database as you would with any other item. By default, there are Page Editor buttons in the following locations:

/sitecore/content/Documents and settings/All users/Start menu/Right/Page Editor

/sitecore/content/Applications/Content Editor/Ribbons/Chunks/Publish/Page Editor

If Read access is denied on these items, they do not appear in the ribbon or Desktop menu.

Disable Analytics in Sitecore 8

Step 1: Disable Analytics in Config: 

Go to /App_Config/Include/Sitecore.Analytics.config and set Analytics.Enabled to false:

<setting name="Analytics.Enabled" value="false" />

Step 2: Comment out connection strings related to analytics in connectionstrings.

<add name="analytics" connectionString="mongodb://localhost/analytics" />
<add name="tracking.live" connectionString="mongodb://localhost/tracking_live" />
<add name="tracking.history" connectionString="mongodb://localhost/tracking_history" />
<add name="tracking.contact" connectionString="mongodb://localhost/tracking_contact" />
<add name="reporting" connectionString="user id=Prakash;password=patel;Data Source=(patel);Database=Sitecore_Analytics" />