Sitecore Azure Module provides an integrated user interface to manage the cloud delivery infrastructure and simplify the deployment of your website to the Microsoft Azure cloud.  It would be a good start to read “Getting started with Sitecore Azure”, before you install.  It gives you an overview about what is the Sitecore Azure and why you will need Sitecore Azure, and examples about how both the content editing and content delivery environments run in the Microsoft Azure cloud etc. There are quite many guidance on getting started with using Sitecore Azure Module, but not so much how it actually working.  This article will start with the introduction of Sitecore Azure, then will talk about how it actually work in the 2nd part.  If you already know what Sitecore Azure module is and how get it installed, you can probably jump into 2nd part.

Why Sitecore Azure

The traditional software development deploy web application on On-Premises, which requests companies to purchase all elements of infrastructure and operating system as well as teams to maintain and deploy. with the introduce of cloud and its natural advantages – less maintenance cost and running cost, it becomes more and more adoptable and acceptable. Here is the comparison between different type of services

Because of this, Sitecore introduced Sitecore Azure module which allows you to deploy and manage Sitecore powered websites on Microsoft Azure utilizing PaaS deployment in a matter of minutes. With out-of-the-box functionality, deployment of web servers and SQL databases to the cloud are automated based on set optimization structures simplifying any deployment headaches.

How to install Sitecore Azure Module

Following the following steps to install Sitecore Azure and Deploy to Azure:

Step One

Apply Environment.xml file from http://scazureenvironments.trafficmanager.net/. It’s only taking 10 mins (initially it did take 1-2 business days to receive the Environment.xml, but nowadays they do it faster)

Step Two

There are two options for establishing to Azure Option A is a very fast and simple method offered by Microsoft. you can generate publishsettings from this link and then follow the instructions on the Microsoft site to get the file, then upload the file for Sitecore. Alternatively, for advanced users, you many choose Option B in which you either use an existing certificate or generate a self-certificate. Upload the .pfx for Sitecore. Once you have selected either a .publishsettings or .pfx file , you will have to provide a password for uploading to Sitecore.

Step Three

When deploying to azure, it allows you to monitor the real-time progress.

All you need to do now is to take a cup of tea and waiting for Sitecore to create all the webapp, database on Azure.

Troubleshoot

You might got 500 error after you first deploy to Azure, this is caused by oversize web.config.  For solving the error, you can update the web.cofing under AzurePackages folder by replacing Sitecore section with <sitecore configSource="App_config\Sitecore.config" />

References

https://doc.sitecore.net/cloud/azure/getting_started_with_sitecore_azure

Umbraco allows you to write a custom converter for the datatype, so as to you can use strong type object. For example the standard Umbraco Core "Content Picker" stores a nodeId as String type. However if you implement a converter it could return a IPublishedContent object.

What is Property Value Converter

A property value converter converts a property editor database stored value to a strong type. The converted value can be accessed from MVC Razor or any other Pulished Content API, defined by Umbraco.

How to create a custom property converter

Here is an example to convert RelatedLink value into a IList<RelatedLink> object.

RelatedLink object looks like this

Implement custom converter RelatedLinksPropertyConverter by inheriting from PropertyValueConverterBase, and IPropertyValueConverterMeta. The custom converter looks like this

NOTE: the custom converter need to follow name convention  [DateType]PropertyConverter

References

https://our.umbraco.org/documentation/extending/property-editors/value-converters

Since IE9, async and defer have a good support for <script> element.  And it’s really awesome and useful.

What is async & defer exactly?

<script async> downloads the file during HTML parsing and will pause the HTML parser to execute it when it has finished downloading.

Green is

<script defer> downloads the file during HTML parsing and will only execute it after the parser has completed.  defer scripts are also guaranteed to execute in the order that they appear in the document.

What is the difference from the normal script element

<script>HTML will wait for the script file to be loaded and executed.

Just a week ago, I attended Sitecore training.  Thanks to Deepend, my employer, for sending me to such an amazing course. Before the training, I have been working on Sitecore for nearly 5 years.  Always questioning, whether it’s still worth to attend. The answer is for sure with following reasons:

• Sitecore certificate is prerequisite for many advanced courses, and for some of Sitecore partners, they provide free training to certified Sitecore developers.
• To gain the best practices from Sitecore experts.
• Certified developer can have access to Sitecore support portal.

The training took 4 days, and at the 4th day there was a certification exam. In total, there are 40 questions. To pass the exam, a minimum score of 70% is required.  I’m really happy that I passed the exam with a score of 95%. =P

David Newwman was our trainer. He talked through all the core functions and covered a lot of areas in both business and technical areas.   The training was absolutely legend, and it is a great step forward in the future career. I highly recommend to whom are interested in becoming Sitecore developer to take the course. 

Some improvement in Sitecore 8:

• Versioned Layout

In the previous version, Sitecore doesn’t support version layout.  layout will be shared crossing different versions.  Now Sitecore added a new field called “Final Rendering Field” which allows presentation can be bersioned like content fro each item version (either numbered or language).

• Federated experience manager

FXM is an application that allows you to track visitor interactions and generate analytics information on external, non-Sitecore websites with Sitecore

• New UX & UI with a customizable dashboard

Also, here are some useful links for learning Sitecore:

https://doc.sitecore.net/

https://kb.sitecore.net/

https://dev.sitecore.net/

https://community.sitecore.net/

Some personal thoughts about CMS =P (Please don't get me wrong)

There is always some arguments around what's best CMS system, Umbraco or Sitecore? It's bit unfaired to pick the best just based on comparing the upfront prince by ignoring the facts that Sitecore has more advanced features =P.

It is not denying that both of CMS are pretty good and they are existing to fit different needs. Sitecore is more suitable for Enterprise organization, whereas Umbraco is mainly for small business. As Sitecore provides more advanced features.

Presonlization (Dynamic content)

Sitecore comes with DMS (digital marketing system) which has various personlisation options built in. the rules-base segmentation is excellent, the dynamic persona generation is awesome, although Umbraco can achieve basic personlisation with 3rd party tool Spindoctor.

ECM (Email Campaign management)

ECM(email campaign management) has been fully implement in Sitecore as well. It allows user to share the content on the website in ECM which means less work for the Campaign manager. it also has the ability to perform A/B/N testing for message body. The most advanced feature for ECM is that it provide reporting dashbord which enable marketers to create and manage optimal email marketing campaigns.

Predictive Analytics by Machine learning (Forecasting)

This bringing together of the power of machine thinking combined with human context, to better understand customer behaviour and predict future trends. Using the Microsoft AzureML platform (a cloud-based service for predictive analytics), advanced business users can begin to mine the masses of data they have stored about their customers in the Sitecore Experience Database (xDB) and experiment with hypothesis against those big data sets using the power of cloud computing.

Now imagine that in the commercial world where you have millions of customer interactions that you simply can’t track or do anything with. This could be an answer; simply create the models, let the cloud do its thing and then monitor, action and test any predictions or trends that it suggests.

Workflow & version

Sitecore workflow enable the capability for use to approve the content before it goes to production. Empowered by versioning feature. content editor can create a new version of the content and publish the new version to production later on. By doing this, content editor can easily compare with the previous version and easily roll back with previous version.

Scalable

Sitecore has content database and website database separated which make it by nature easily to scale up. whereas umbraco has only one database, when handling large amount of data, it becomes a question in terms of the stability and performance

Please don't get me wrong, not saying Umbraco is not good. I like umbraco as well, as it's easy to implement. No doubt they are both great CMS and has their own values to the client. =)