In another special episode of Kentico Rocks, Bryan Soltis and Brian McKeiver discuss what their trip across the pond was like as they attended this year's European version of the Kentico Connection conference in Prague. In case you did not hear, all four Kentico MVPs made the journey to converge on the capitol city of the Czech Republic. As a group we discuss some of the highlights of the two day event including some of our favorite moments. Kentico even had a special surprise in store for all of the event attendees that was quite a blast. Give this episode a listen to find out exactly what happened.
Kentico Rocks Podcast Episode 11
Win a Free Ticket to Kentico Connection 2014 Boston
Yep, you read it right. I am officially opening a new contest. I am giving away a FREE ticket to the upcoming Kentico Connections 2014 conference in Boston, MA on November 10th and 11th, 2014.
Speed Up Your Kentico Debugging in Visual Studio
Any seasoned ASP.Net developer knows that building your project(s) before starting a debugging session is an important step to take to ensure that there are no silly coding mistakes lurking around. Most seasoned Kentico developers know that performing a full build on a Kentico web site project can be time consuming if there is not a Solid State Drive in use on the computer running Visual Studio.
I myself have experienced this issue many times over, and a long time ago I finally decided to see what options there are out there for speeding up the process. During my recent journey to Kentico Connection Prague, a few of the other Kentico MVPs reminded me that I had never put out a blog post about a simple trick that you can take to speed up your debugging session in Kentico. Today I am going to illustrate one method that might just save you and other Kentico developers out there some time.
And The Winner Is...
Better late than never right? I had originally planned on announcing the winner of my Win a Free Ticket to Kentico Connection 2014 Boston contest at 1:00 PM EST today. That obviously didn’t happen. So let's get right down to business tonight. Drum roll please....
Congratulations to @bkehren!
Bkehren was selected at random from the different entries that the contest received.
I'm Speaking at Kentico Connection Boston 2014
On November 10th and 11th, just a few short days away, Kentico Developers, Partners, Employees and Customers will be meeting up in Boston, MA for the 2014 version of Kentico Connection. I am attending and speaking again at the best, most informative Kentico CMS conference of the year.
As always I am truly looking forward to the event. It is going to be a great opportunity to meet and network with other Kentico Developers and Partners, especially Brenden Kehren who won a free a ticket to the conference from my own give away. However, this conference is going to be jammed packed for me. I am pulling triple duty. I will be giving two sessions and taking part in a new event this year, a live CMS-Connected show.
5 Things I Learned At Kentico Connection Boston 2014
Top 10 Kentico Related Posts of 2014
It is only fitting to start with the biggest news of the year and that would be the release of Kentico 8.0. This year's major point release was a huge success. The newly redesigned user interface and reduced footprint made developers and marketers quite happy. The product has never been easier to use. Not stopping with just a single release in the year Kentico also pushed out a minor point update to 8.1. This update included a few performance upgrades and a small set of new functionality. As a result Kentico 8.0 and Kentico 8.1 topics dominated the developer community blogs, podcasts, and questions on DevNet.
2014 turned out to be another great year for many more reasons too. Keep reading to find out what else happened and which posts made it to my Top 10 Kentico related posts of 2014.
Kentico 8.2 Quick Tip for Importing Contacts
As you probably know the release of Kentico 8.2 is right around the corner. During my initial testing of this minor point release, a few of the new online marketing features have piqued my interest. The change to Email Campaigns from Newsletters is pretty nice, the online marketing performance improvements are welcome, and the ability to import Contacts from a file rounds out what's new in this area of Kentico. The ability to import contacts from a CSV file is nothing earthshaking, however, I was pretty curious to see how it was implemented in 8.2 so I decided to put it through its paces.
Ensure Your Kentico EMS Site Is Running At Peak Performance
If you are a long time user of Kentico or a Kentico developer who maintains sites that utilize Kentico EMS, this tip is for you. So stop what you are doing, go grab a cup of coffee (or something stronger) and continue reading to see how you can keep your online marketing solution running in top notch form. I should also mention that you won't need to change a single line of code to do so. Yes that's right, not a single line.
I am going to start with a question though. Have you ever heard the saying that "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure"? If you have, then this post should make a ton of sense. If you have not, then maybe I can teach you something today.
I'm Speaking at GR DevDay 2015
GR DevDay is a one-day software development conference in Grand Rapids, MI. This year the conference is scheduled for March 21st, 2015 and is being hosted at Calvin College. The conference is completely volunteer-run and organized by developers with other developers in mind. It is definitely one of the most prominent software conferences in the state of Michigan. A wide range of technology topics will be explored and developers of all backgrounds are welcome.
This year I have the honor of being chosen as one of the speakers. I am going to give a talk on how developers have new tools in their tool belts to facilitate advanced Marketing Automation capabilities. If you attend my session you can expect to learn, from a developer's point of view, how you can utilize and extend your CMS to turn it into an automated ROI machine.
Kentico Rocks Podcast Episode 12
Free Web Part for Kentico - Related Blog Posts by Tag
I'm Speaking at Code PaLOUsa 2015
This year Kentico and BizStream are supporting the event as platinum sponsors. We will be present at booth number 502. If you are attending come say "Hi!". Also as a part of that sponsorship, I am proud to announce that two of those well-known professionals will be myself and Bryan Soltis, Kentico's Technical Evangelist. We will be co-presenting during the conference.
A Helpful Kentico Scheduled Task for Team Development
11 Spring Cleaning Tips for Your Kentico Website - Part 1
The sun is out, winter coats are disappearing, the BizStream barbecue grill is starting to be used at lunch time, ants are trying to invade our office, and baseball is back. This must mean that spring is in the air. It’s the time of year where getting some seasonal chores completed and setting up for summer is the norm.
As I was reflecting on the nice weather today on my commute home, I thought why not also use this time as reminder for all you Kentico developers and even Kentico marketers out there to do a little preventative maintenance on your CMS. It is easy to let small things like the items on this list slip by the cracks. Now would be a good time to address them especially if your Kentico site has been up and running for some time now. Without further ado, I have 11 tips that will keep your Kentico site in tip-top shape for 2015.
11 Spring Cleaning Tips for Your Kentico Website - Part 2
Kentico Rocks Podcast Episode 13
In this episode of Kentico Rocks, Bryan Soltis and I talk about our experience at the recent developer conference, Code PaLOUsa 2015. After that we move on to how to sharpen your Kentico API skills, and we finish with what the future of ASP.NET vNext holds for .Net developers and the Kentico community. You can listen to whole podcast after the jump.
Improve Your Kentico Site Search Experience in Only a Matter of Minutes
It's common knowledge that when using a website most website visitors prefer using an on-site search component as opposed to an overbearing navigation menu. Searching is believed to be the primary way to provide visitors with exactly the content that they are looking for. If implemented correctly, an internal site search can provide a nice boost to the overall user experience a site visitor. If implemented poorly, it can also quickly increase the bounce rate of the initial landing page.
In this blog post series I am going to show you, in only a matter of minutes, how to create a better search experience than what the out of the box configuration provides. The impressive part of this solution is that it also utilizes additional out of the box functionality that I feel most Kentico users and developers are not aware of.
Improve Your Kentico Site Search Experience in Only a Matter of Minutes - Part 2
It's common knowledge that when using a website most website visitors prefer using an on-site search component as opposed to an overbearing navigation menu. Searching is believed to be the primary way to provide visitors with exactly the content that they are looking for. If implemented correctly, an internal site search can provide a nice boost to the overall user experience a site visitor. If implemented poorly, it can also quickly increase the bounce rate of the initial landing page.
This is the second part of How to Improve Your Kentico Site Search Experience in Only a Matter of Minutes. Please be sure to read part 1 first before reading this post. The second part of this blog post series focuses on explaining how to create the solution.
Improve Your Kentico Site Search Experience in Only a Matter of Minutes - Part 3
It's common knowledge that when using a website most website visitors prefer using an on-site search component as opposed to an overbearing navigation menu. Searching is believed to be the primary way to provide visitors with exactly the content that they are looking for. If implemented correctly, an internal site search can provide a nice boost to the overall user experience a site visitor. If implemented poorly, it can also quickly increase the bounce rate of the initial landing page.
This is part 3 of How to Improve Your Kentico Site Search Experience in Only a Matter of Minutes. Please be sure to read part 1 and part 2 first before reading this post. The third part of this blog post series illustrates other Smart search filter options and real world examples.