<![CDATA[DevNet Author Profile]]> <![CDATA[A fond farewell]]> Bryan Soltis Hello friends. This is my last blog post as Technical Evangelist here at Kentico. I can’t describe the awesome time I’ve had serving this community and helping developers build solutions with our products. Before I go, I wanted to let you know a little about my future, what will happen with Kentico Technical Evangelism, and a few things in store for the community moving forward.

]]> Wed, 13 Mar 2019 07:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Creating an MVC Widget Showcase Site with Kentico EMS and MVC – Custom Widgets and Inline Editors]]> Bryan Soltis If you’ve been following this blog, you know that we now have a functioning MVC site with some dynamic content stored in a Kentico installation. We’ve preconfigured the site for widgets, applied a design, and some script bundling. In this article, I’m going to show you how to create a custom widget within your sites and use it in an Editable Area. Let’s get to it!

]]> Tue, 26 Feb 2019 14:09:37 GMT <![CDATA[Creating an MVC Widget Showcase Site with Kentico EMS and MVC – Adding a Design and the Page Builder]]> Bryan Soltis Welcome back! In Part 1 of the series, I covered creating a VERY basic MVC site and pulling in some Kentico-hosted content. This article is going to keep the party going with applying a design, implementing the new Page Builder functionality, and setting ourselves up for some custom widget development. 

]]> Tue, 12 Feb 2019 14:45:05 GMT <![CDATA[Creating an MVC Widget Showcase Site with Kentico EMS and MVC – Getting Started]]> Bryan Soltis With the release of Kentico 12, there’s no secret that MVC is the future for all things Kentico. From the simplest brochure sites to the most complex integrations, MVC is the recommended approach for any developer working with the platform (have we made that clear enough yet?). In this new article series, I will walk you through creating an MVC site using Kentico 12 and document every step.

]]> Fri, 25 Jan 2019 15:36:23 GMT <![CDATA[Announcing the 2019 Kentico MVPs]]> Bryan Soltis Kentico’s technical community is a vibrant and diverse mix of developers, designers, and site administrators. Among those members are several individuals who go to great lengths to help others and promote Kentico and its features. For their efforts, Kentico awards these dedicated members the title of Kentico Most Valuable Professional (MVP).  In this article, I will introduce you to the 2019 Kentico MVPs.

]]> Wed, 09 Jan 2019 07:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Transitioning a Large Development Team to Kentico MVC – An Interview with MVP Ilesh Mistry]]> Bryan Soltis Kentico partners come in all shapes and sizes. Some are small, 5-10 people operations, while others are enormous titans of industry with employee counts into the hundreds. While these companies may operate and handle their projects differently, one thing remains: they all must come up with a plan to move to MVC. As one of our largest partners, MMT Digital has crafted a unique process to get their team up to date. And because our MVPs are such awesome folks, Ilesh Mistry recently told me all about their MVC plans.

]]> Thu, 20 Dec 2018 07:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[When Should I Migrate My Kentico Portal Site to MVC?]]> Bryan Soltis So, you know that we’ve released Kentico 12 with all its awesome MVC support. And you know you should be using MVC for all your new sites. Sounds like a perfect plan! But what about your existing sites? Our Support and Consulting teams are fielding a lot of questions from our partners as to when they should migrate their existing Portal sites. Because everyone loves charts, I made a handy workflow for you in this article to help you out.

]]> Wed, 19 Dec 2018 07:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Which Development Model Should I Choose for My Kentico EMS Site?]]> Bryan Soltis With the release of Kentico 12 and our updated MVC support, developers have a big question they have to answer. For their new projects, which development model should they choose? We have been publishing many articles and best practices on this topic, including deep dives into the tech, interviews with community experts, and technical webinars to help companies along the way. Sometimes, people just want a simple chart to help them decide. In this article, we’ve got you covered on how to choose the model for your next project!

]]> Wed, 12 Dec 2018 07:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Transitioning a Small Agency to MVC – An Interview with MVP Brenden Kehren]]> Bryan Soltis Having a large development can bring a lot of advantages. With more developers, knowledge and experience can be exchanged easily as downtime can be minimized with group trainings and meetings. For smaller development teams, the impact is far greater, often requiring special planning when a new technology is being adopted. In this article, I’ll share with you some highlights from my recent interview with Founder of Kehren Development and Kentico MVP Brenden Kehren on how his team is making the transition to MVC in preparation for Kentico 12.

]]> Wed, 14 Nov 2018 07:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[MVC and the Kentico Advantage Site]]> Bryan Soltis MVC is kind of big deal here at Kentico. If you haven’t noticed, we’ve been pouring a ton of development into the framework to help developers build better solutions. In order to make an awesome platform for you, we had to adopt the MVC mindset, as well. And what better way than to migrate one of our own sites to it! Let me walk you through our experience of migrating the Kentico Advantage site to MVC.

]]> Wed, 03 Oct 2018 06:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Hosting Kentico MVC Applications in Azure]]> Bryan Soltis The rise of MVC has not been a quiet process. Over the past few years, developers have been saying...err…SCREAMING that they want to use modern, scalable frameworks for their Kentico applications. And they’re right! Modular, flexible architectures allow sites to be developed and tested much easier, by separating logical areas of the functionality. Sure, you can do that with Kentico. But what about your Azure hosting with MVC? In this article, I’ll give you some tips on how to get the most out of your Azure-hosted MVC sites.

]]> Wed, 12 Sep 2018 06:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[What Kentico Partners Need To Know About Transitioning To MVC - Video]]> Bryan Soltis In this video, Kentico Technical Evangelist Bryan Soltis talks with BizStream Co-Founder and MVP Brian McKeiver about what partners need to consider when transitioning their development to MVC.

]]> Wed, 22 Aug 2018 06:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Analyzing Kentico Media Files with the Azure Cognitive Vision API]]> Bryan Soltis Editors have a lot to do. From crafting perfect content to managing campaigns, they are often overwhelmed with tasks needed to manage an application. With more and more regulations being adopted for usability, ensuring a site is compliant is paramount. An often-overlooked area is media descriptions. In this article, I’m going to show you how to leverage the Azure Cognitive Vision API to automate your image descriptions within Kentico.

]]> Wed, 25 Jul 2018 07:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Hosting the Kentico Cloud .NET Boilerplate on a Raspberry Pi with Docker]]> Bryan Soltis Who doesn’t love flexibility? From programming to juggling chainsaws, the ability to adapt to any situation is always a welcome capability. With new devices and platforms being released every day, this becomes especially important to web applications. Enter .NET Core, Docker, and Kentico Cloud. Each of these are extremely capable components of a flexible architecture developers can use to build some amazing solutions. Don’t believe me? Let me show you how…

]]> Thu, 05 Jul 2018 16:45:04 GMT <![CDATA[Transforming URLs with Kentico EMS]]> Bryan Soltis When it comes to the web, SEO is everything. If people can’t find your content, then you’re pretty much wasting your time. Making sure your URLs are properly formatted and optimized are an essential step to ensuring your content is easily found. Kentico has a lot of great functionality to take care of this, however, you may need to customize the process to fit your specific needs. In this article, I’ll show you how to leverage global event handlers to transform your URLs into SEO-friendly values.

]]> Wed, 06 Jun 2018 06:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Translating Content with Kentico Cloud and Azure]]> Bryan Soltis Automation can go a long way in making a developer's life easier. When it comes to content, the less to deal with, the better! Let me show you how to automate translation with Kentico Cloud.

Ever since we released Kentico Cloud, developers have asked for a way to write content into their projects. To meet this need, we released a Content Management API last November, which allowed content to be created programmatically from any source. So, what are the possibilities this interface? In this article, I’ll show you how I leveraged Azure and the Kentico Cloud Content Management API to automate translating my content. 

]]> Thu, 24 May 2018 18:36:01 GMT <![CDATA[Tips for Hosting Your Kentico Sites in Azure SQL Database]]> Bryan Soltis If you’re using Kentico in Azure, then you probably have seen a lot of options in your portal for your SQL database. Azure SQL Database, Microsoft’s SaaS database option, is a fantastic tool that gives you nearly unlimited SQL computing power and capability. But what about all those security options and performance recommendations if shows you? In this article, I’m going to cover a few of the key features of Azure’s SQL Database to help you get the most out of cloud-hosted Kentico sites.

]]> Wed, 09 May 2018 06:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Adding Real-Time FedEx Shipping Rates to Kentico 11]]> Bryan Soltis If you have an e-commerce store, chances are you ship things to your customers. This means a lot of orders and a lot of calculations. One of the biggest ways to get more sales and happy customers is to integrate real-time shipping rates into your site.  In this article, I’ll show you how to add real-time FedEx rates to your Kentico 11 site.

]]> Thu, 12 Apr 2018 06:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Spending some quality time with the Kentico Data Protection module]]> Bryan Soltis By now, I’m sure you’re an expert on GDPR. You‘ve hung out with your favorite legal team to talk about it, read all the riveting blogs about the rules, and started dreaming in GDPR-eze. You have all the info on what you need to do, but may not be sure how to get things going within your Kentico sites. In this article, I’m going to walk you through the new Data Protection module included with your Kentico 11 EMS installation to help you get compliant.

]]> Wed, 14 Mar 2018 12:12:56 GMT <![CDATA[Building a Kentico News Android app with the Kentico Cloud Delivery JavaRX SDK]]> Bryan Soltis Our Community team is hard at work, producing new SDKs for Kentico Cloud for all types of platforms. From frontend to backend, web to mobile, there are countless frameworks we’re looking at to expand our samples and SDKs. Recently, we launched our new Kentico Cloud Delivery JavaRx SDK, enabling Java and Android developers to easily integrate Kentico Cloud into their apps. In this article, I’ll take a closer look at the SDK and sample projects to help you get started with these new GitHub projects.

]]> Thu, 01 Mar 2018 18:38:19 GMT <![CDATA[Digging into the Kentico EMS Azure Search Integration]]> Bryan Soltis Every version of Kentico is packed full of amazing features and updates. With Kentico 11, one of the biggest advancements was our built-in integration with Azure Search. In this article, I’m giving you a crash course in this new functionality. In the end, you should be able to get your sites up and running quickly on Microsoft’s Search as a Service.

]]> Wed, 14 Feb 2018 07:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Say Hello to the New Kentico Cloud SDKs]]> Bryan Soltis When you build your applications with microservices, integration is the key. The ability to connect systems and move information easily is essential to architecting and developing stable, functional solutions. With Kentico Cloud, we are constantly working on new SDKs and sample projects to help companies leverage the platform on more projects. In this article, I’ll tell you about our latest SDK additions.

]]> Fri, 02 Feb 2018 13:25:34 GMT <![CDATA[What Omnichannel Means to Developers]]> Bryan Soltis “We need to start thinking about OMNICHANNEL for our content.”

“Kentico Cloud is all about OMNICHANNEL! So, how do we use it?”

“I’ve been watching for hours but there’s nothing but reruns and infomercials on every OMNICHANNEL!”

The phrase “Omnichannel” is certainly making the rounds when it comes to content. Hatched from the minds of over-worked marketers tired of creating posts for everywhere they need to. In a quest to reduce their stress (and chances for carpal tunnel), people have gotten smarter about how and when they produce content, planning for multiple channels from the start.

Makes perfect sense, right? Everyone wants their job to be a little easier and more effective.

But what does it all mean to developers?

]]> Thu, 25 Jan 2018 15:22:54 GMT <![CDATA[Creating a Most Popular Pages Email Widget in Kentico]]> Bryan Soltis Best of breed solutions often offer two things: great functionality and an easy-to-user interface. When it comes to email marketing, providing users a simple, guided experience allows them to create their campaigns without having to deal with technical hurdles. In Kentico 11, one of the biggest features was the new Email Builder, a drag-and-drop utility to allow marketers to create dynamic email campaigns. In this article, I’ll show you how to create a custom email widget to display popular site content using macros.

]]> Fri, 19 Jan 2018 07:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Announcing the 2018 Kentico MVPs]]> Bryan Soltis Kentico’s technical community is a vibrant and diverse mix of developers, designers, and site administrators. Among those members are several individuals who go to great lengths to help others and promote Kentico and its features. For their efforts, Kentico awards these dedicated members the title of Kentico Most Valuable Professional (MVP).  In this article, I will introduce you to the 2018 Kentico MVPs.

]]> Wed, 03 Jan 2018 07:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[2017 Kentico Technical Evangelism Year in Review]]> Bryan Soltis As another year wraps up, I wanted to write my annual post recapping the year in Kentico Technical Evangelism. The last 12 months have been filled with loads of articles, events, and more than a few discussions. So, let’s kick back and see what all has happened in 2017.

]]> Wed, 27 Dec 2017 07:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Creating Content Releases in Kentico Cloud]]> Bryan Soltis Content editors have a lot do. From managing web content to social media, they are tasked with curating and publishing all sorts of data to many locations. With so much activity on a daily basis, editors are constantly looking for ways to be more productive, and reduce the amount of manual steps they have to take.

]]> Tue, 19 Dec 2017 13:46:30 GMT <![CDATA[Understanding Macro Identities in Kentico 11]]> Bryan Soltis Macros have long been a friend to any Kentico developer. Whether it’s one of many built-in methods or a custom one, these little code blocks can be powerhouses when it comes to developing your applications. One of their best aspects is their ability to be contextual, based on the user that inserted it.  While this very powerful, using macros between instances often resulted in broken or invalid macros, when it came to security. In Kentico 11, we’ve solved that challenge with macro identities.

]]> Wed, 13 Dec 2017 07:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Automating Your Kentico Cloud Content with Azure Logic Apps]]> Bryan Soltis The world is becoming more automated. From cars to coffee makers, systems are becoming more dynamic as developers leverage integrations between applications and platforms. When it comes to publishing content, any improvements that save an editor time is a huge step in the right direction. Luckily, teaming Kentico Cloud up with Azure Logic Apps can bring you a ton of automation, with only a little custom code.

]]> Thu, 07 Dec 2017 14:02:23 GMT <![CDATA[Integrating Auth0 With Kentico]]> Bryan Soltis In a recent article, I showed you how to leverage claims-based authentication within your Kentico sites. In my example, I chose Auth0 for my identity provider, as it’s one of the easiest systems to implement around. In this blog, I’ll give you a deeper look at how to setup and configure Auth0 for your Kentico sites..

]]> Wed, 29 Nov 2017 13:33:01 GMT <![CDATA[Using the New Kentico Cloud Content Management API]]> Bryan Soltis As the headless CMS approach becomes more and more common, the implementations become increasingly complex. When a project is new, things are much great! When dealing with an existing application that is moving to the cloud, things get a little more challenging. Luckily, Kentico Cloud has a great new Content Management API to help you out! 

]]> Tue, 21 Nov 2017 15:58:32 GMT <![CDATA[Improving Search in Kentico 11 with Azure Search]]> Bryan Soltis Everyone’s been to a site with truly awful search. You have an idea of what you are looking for, but no clue as to where to start. You click on the Search link and are taken to a box, with little else. Sure, you can get some results there, but we’ve all seen a list with “Page 1 of 1,580” at the bottom. Not very helpful, is it? Before you go throwing your monitor across the room, I’m happy to tell you that Kentico 11 is going to support Faceted Search! Long gone are the days of your users sifting through the abyss in search of their content. With Version 11’s Azure Search integration, you’ll be able to build an intuitive (and USABLE) search experience, no matter the content.

]]> Wed, 15 Nov 2017 07:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[3 New Kentico Cloud Features Developers Are Going to Love]]> Bryan Soltis With Kentico Cloud being a SaaS (Software as a Service), our development team is constantly improving the product. By controlling the environment, we can push out improvements on a regular basis. Recently, we rolled out several features that are going to make your development with the platform even better. I’ll fill you in on the latest enhancements.

]]> Wed, 08 Nov 2017 09:14:51 GMT <![CDATA[Integrating Custom Claims-Based Authentication with Kentico]]> Bryan Soltis When it comes to security and authentication, there’s no shortage of customization that developers will need to implement. On-premise and cloud-hosted AD servers, everyone’s favorite social media platform, or some Access database on that one guy’s machine; you name it! Companies have very specific verification processes for their users’ identities and it’s up to you to make it all work. While Claims-Based Authentication is nothing new, you may not know how to best handle it within your Kentico sites. In this article, I’ll show you how to get your external users logged in quickly and working within your application.

]]> Wed, 01 Nov 2017 12:58:33 GMT <![CDATA[5 Questions Digital Agencies Might Get about Kentico EMS and Kentico Cloud]]> Bryan Soltis As the Headless CMS concept comes more prevalent in technology, so do the questions from the clients. On top of selling their services and skill, agencies often must educate their customers on why a Headless CMS makes sense for their project.

]]> Tue, 24 Oct 2017 13:37:17 GMT <![CDATA[Deployment Options for Kentico MVC Sites to Azure App Services]]> Bryan Soltis As MVC becomes the main development model for Kentico developers, understanding how to host your applications becomes an important skill to master. Depending on your hosting environment, your application structure can have a significant impact on your ability to scale, update, and manage your projects. With more and more companies considering Azure App Services, I wanted to give you my thoughts on how to best use the platform for your Kentico MVC sites.

]]> Wed, 18 Oct 2017 06:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Using Slack Webhooks with Kentico Cloud]]> Bryan Soltis Kentico Cloud’s webhook support is a great tool for developers to use within their applications. By configuring this feature, you can easily automate processes and simplify your custom code. Webhooks can update external systems, ensure data integrity, and keep all your systems (and people) in sync as content changes. In this article, I’ll show you how you can use this new capability to update your team’s Slack channels when content is published.

]]> Wed, 11 Oct 2017 06:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Say Hello to the Kentico Events App]]> Bryan Soltis If you’re ever attended a Kentico event, you know they are full of some awesome content and great connections. With so much packed into each conference, staying up to date on the sessions and details can be tough as new speakers and locations are added. With the new Kentico Events app, you’ll have access to the latest information as soon as it is released. In this article, I’ll tell you about the app features, give a glimpse into the architecture, and let you know how to get it installed on your phone.

]]> Wed, 04 Oct 2017 06:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Kentico Cloud is in the Marketplace]]> Bryan Soltis All the best features in the world don’t mean a thing if people can’t see your product. As a vendor, you always want to be in front of as many users as possible. You also want to get people using your product quickly. We’ve recently launched the Kentico Cloud Sample site in the Azure Marketplace to do just that. In this article, I’ll show you how easy it is to getting going with Kentico Cloud in Azure.

]]> Wed, 27 Sep 2017 06:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[5 Things You’re Going to Love in Kentico 11]]> Bryan Soltis Everyone loves looking at their phone and seeing an app update waiting for them. Maybe it’s a new feature or capability, or just a slick new UI, and that magic little icon is your ticket to the goods. Regardless of the industry or platform, it’s exciting to see what companies have baked into their new releases, and to start planning how you can use them. In this article, I’m going to dive into some awesome things coming for developers in Kentico 11.

]]> Wed, 20 Sep 2017 06:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Kentico Cloud Tools for Developers]]> Bryan Soltis It’s been nearly a year since Kentico Cloud was released and the Headless CMS concept is beginning to be a major player for developers. As more companies start to offer these API-first models for implementing their products, the technical community may be left scratching their heads on how to best implement them. In this article, I’ll tell you about some great resources waiting for developers looking to build with Kentico Cloud.

]]> Wed, 13 Sep 2017 12:02:54 GMT <![CDATA[Google AMPing the Kentico Advantage Site]]> Bryan Soltis When it comes to the web, it’s all about speed these days. Sure, flying toasters and embedded videos were all the rage 10 years ago. These days, people want to get to the information they’re looking for quickly, and without the riffraff of extra content. Google figured this out long ago and has steadily been implementing the Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) concept into the industry. By limiting what tags and content can be displayed, Google can ensure a speedy delivery of sites in a predictable manner. In this article, I’ll show you how we converted the Kentico Advantage site to use this new technique. 

]]> Wed, 06 Sep 2017 13:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Integrating the Azure Bing Spell Check API into Kentico]]> Bryan Soltis The world is full of horrible typists. From the ever-devolving grammar on social media to the classic hunt-and-peck, there’s no shortage of people that could use a little help in their data entry. When it comes to capturing data on the web, this is especially important as the information often contains personal and contact information. In this article, I’ll show you how you can leverage Azure’s new cloud-based Bing Spell Check API within your Kentico sites to proof your user’s data.

]]> Wed, 23 Aug 2017 06:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Using an Azure Function Webhook with Kentico Cloud]]> Bryan Soltis Developers want to automate everything. Whether it’s moving code or testing a function, enslaving a machine to do your dirty work is the best way to exert your authority over computers, and to simplify your coding life. With Kentico Cloud’s new webhook support, the platform just got a lot more attractive to the development community. In this article, I’ll show you an example of how to use this new capability to streamline your applications.

]]> Wed, 16 Aug 2017 13:08:11 GMT <![CDATA[Personalizing a Page-Based Email in Kentico]]> Bryan Soltis Email marketing is a staple of any digital marketing effort. Allowing companies to target their audience with relevant, personalized information is a surefire way to generate more activity, communication, and (hopefully) profit. With Kentico, emails can be manually created, or leverage an existing page of the site. In this article, I’ll show you how you can personalize page-based emails to your subscribers with a custom macro.

]]> Wed, 09 Aug 2017 06:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[5 Tips for Making Your Kentico Development a Little Easier]]> Bryan Soltis Everyone loves tips and tricks. Whether it’s a cool Netflix hack to view hidden titles or words of wisdom about the snow, it’s the little things that make a task easier that really brighten your day. In keeping with the same theme, let me tell you about a few Kentico tricks you may not have known.

]]> Wed, 02 Aug 2017 06:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Creating a Kentico Cloud-powered Xamarin App – Part 2]]> Bryan Soltis In Part 1 of this series, I showed you how to build a base Xamarin app using Kentico Cloud. In that article, I covered creating the initial application, adding a service, and implementing calls to retrieve the data. In Part 2, I’ll cover how to display that content and build a cross-platform app using XAML.

]]> Wed, 26 Jul 2017 13:05:00 GMT <![CDATA[Creating a Kentico Cloud-Powered Xamarin App - Part 1]]> Bryan Soltis As a Headless CMS, Kentico Cloud is all about delivering content to any channel. Whether it’s web, mobile, smartwatch, or carrier pigeon, companies need to edit their information in a single location and have it accessible to all their applications. In this article, I’ll show you how to leverage Kentico Cloud’s new Xamarin support to build a cross-platform mobile app using KC-hosted content.

]]> Wed, 26 Jul 2017 13:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Creating a Sortable User Selector form control in Kentico]]> Bryan Soltis Form controls are a powerful component of Kentico. By creating these custom interfaces, developers can provide an intuitive and dynamic experience for their users. While Kentico has many controls out of the box, projects often require more complex solutions to achieves specific goals. In this blog, I’ll show you how to create a form control that allows drag & drop ordering for multiple objects.

]]> Wed, 19 Jul 2017 06:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Working with Localization in Kentico Cloud]]> Bryan Soltis When developing for a global audience, you have to think multi-lingual. Presenting content in native languages helps you connect with your audience and provide them information in a much more personal experience. We recently released an update to Kentico Cloud to enable localization of your data, giving you the ability to edit and store your content in nearly any language. In this blog, I’ll show you how to leverage this new capability within your projects.

]]> Wed, 12 Jul 2017 19:40:12 GMT <![CDATA[Recapping the 2017 Kentico MVP Summit]]> Bryan Soltis In June, we hosted the annual Kentico MVP Summit at our home office in Brno, Czech Republic. A weeklong event focused on getting MVPs as much as info as possible, the summit covered a wide range of Kentico and Kentico Cloud topics. In this article, I’ll give you a little glimpse into what we discussed and what to expect for the rest of 2017.

]]> Wed, 05 Jul 2017 06:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Getting started with the Kentico Cloud Sample JavaScript Site]]> Bryan Soltis One the best parts about a headless CMS like Kentico Cloud is the ability to develop in nearly any language. Whether it’s a slick JavaScript library like Angular or React, or a classic framework like .NET or ASP (shudder), using Kentico Cloud for your content delivery means you can focus entirely on the presentation. To help developers adopt this new platform, we have several open source projects to get you going. In this article, I’ll show you how you start building your sites using the Kentico Cloud Sample JavaScript site.

]]> Wed, 28 Jun 2017 06:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[5 Tips for Debugging Kentico]]> Bryan Soltis For a .NET developer, working with Kentico is usually a straight-forward process. Thanks to extensive documentation, dedicated support, and loads of blog posts from the community, finding help is relatively easy. Sometimes, no matter who you talk to, you still need to understand more about what’s happening with your site to solve your issue. Luckily, there are quite a few debugging options within the platform to help you get answers. In this blog, I’ll cover some of these tools, and hopefully help you move forward with your development. 

]]> Wed, 21 Jun 2017 06:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Getting to Know the Kentico Cloud .NET SDK Delivery API Filters]]> Bryan Soltis Once you get started developing with Kentico Cloud, you’ll quickly realize the power of the platform is its accessibility. By leveraging industry-standard services to retrieve information, companies can architect robust solutions capable of delivering content to any device. In this article, I’ll be introducing you to the various filters that are available within the Delivery API to help you understand how to get your content quickly. 

]]> Wed, 14 Jun 2017 07:12:12 GMT <![CDATA[Understanding the ScriptHelper API in Kentico]]> Bryan Soltis Unless you’re sticking to your web design skills from 1998, you mostly are incorporating some sort of front-end framework into your applications. Whether it’s JavaScript libraries, templating engines, or just some sweet code to add trails to your mouse movements, external scripts often power the captivating experience users have come to expect. In this article, I’ll give you some important information on the ScriptHelper class in Kentico to help build out your controls. 

]]> Wed, 07 Jun 2017 06:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Creating the Kentico Cloud Showcase Site]]> Bryan Soltis Over the past few months the Kentico Roadshow has brought updates and technical information to cities around the world. If you attended any of these sessions, you got to hear about the .NET Core Boilerplate project for Kentico Cloud. As part of the presentation, we showed you how to build a site in minutes using this open-source project. In this article, I’ll share with you the process we covered, as well as all source code for the showcase site. 

]]> Thu, 01 Jun 2017 06:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Quick Tip: Retrieving fields for any class in Kentico]]> Bryan Soltis Have you ever needed to get all the fields for a page type in Kentico? Maybe you needed to know the list of fields that make up a class in a custom module. In this blog, I’ll show you a quick way to retrieve the fields for any class in your system.  And just for fun, I’ll implement it using a custom macro.

]]> Wed, 24 May 2017 06:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Powering Alexa with Kentico Cloud]]> Bryan Soltis Websites. Mobile apps. Smartwatches. Wearables.  Digital assistants. How you deliver content is limitless, with so many options for how people consume and leverage information. Thanks to AI, people are integrating technology into their everyday lives and using it to get information from their favorite sources. Enter the Headless CMS. By hosting your content in a central location, you can easily provide your data to a digital butler with ease. In this article, I’ll show you how I powered Alexa with my Kentico Cloud content.

]]> Wed, 17 May 2017 06:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[5 Tips to Secure Your Kentico Sites]]> Bryan Soltis Nothing spells disaster for a developer like an unsecure site. Whether it’s a vulnerability or a bad configuration, leaving your application exposed is just asking for trouble. Luckily, there are some simple steps you can take to ensure your deployments are safe. In this article, I’ll give you 5 ways you can lock down your site and hopefully keep your hair from falling out.

]]> Wed, 10 May 2017 06:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Using Azure Functions to Integrate Azure Search with Kentico Cloud]]> Bryan Soltis For the past few years, I’ve presented on Azure Search at several conferences and events. Microsoft’s Software-As-A-Service search solution is a great way to add powerful capabilities to a site with a few lines of code.  Combine that functionality with Azure Functions and a Headless CMS and you get a very powerful search experience for your applications. In this article, I’ll show you how I integrated Azure Search into my Kentico Cloud site, using Azure Functions.

]]> Wed, 03 May 2017 06:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Building Applications Using Microservices and Azure – Part 2]]> Bryan Soltis Developing applications using microservices is a great way to increase functionality, without being solely dependent on a single solution. By using multiple systems and services, you can leverage the best from each platform. In Part 1 of this series, I showed you how I architected my personal site using a microservices. In this next edition, I’ll break down these integrations and show you how to leverage disconnected systems in your applications to achieve some powerful capabilities.

]]> Wed, 26 Apr 2017 06:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Displaying Azure Database Statistics in Kentico]]> Bryan Soltis When deploying Kentico to Azure, one of the biggest questions that comes up is what size database to use. While we publish some recommendations in our documentation, your individual mileage may vary. To know if your database is spec’d high enough, you need to understand how it’s performing. In this article, I’ll show you how you can quickly view your Azure Database information right from inside your site, using a custom utility.

]]> Wed, 19 Apr 2017 06:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Kentico 1 on 1 - Talking E commerce with Kristian Bortnik]]> Bryan Soltis In this Kentico 1 on 1, I interviewed newly crowned MVP Kristian Bortnik from Web Design Magic. Kristian is the Head of Development there and has a lot of experience around customizing the Kentico Ecommerce engine. I thought it would be interesting for the community to hear Kristian’s approach to creating customized ecommerce solutions.

]]> Wed, 12 Apr 2017 06:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[5 Reasons to Use the Kentico Cloud Boilerplate Project]]> Bryan Soltis Innovative technology always presents a challenge for developers. Whether it’s a new platform or language, starting from scratch can be a tough task, even for seasoned software engineers. Luckily, nearly every new library or service has some open source projects available to help you get going. For completely new platforms like Kentico Cloud, these projects could be a huge help to developers new to the Headless CMS concept. In this article, I’ll give you 5 great reasons you should check out the Kentico Cloud Boilerplate project.

]]> Wed, 05 Apr 2017 06:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Creating an Outdated Content Notification Task in Kentico]]> Bryan Soltis Having expired content on your site is the quickest way to kill traffic and interest. If users don’t see regular updates to your content, they’ll lose interest and likely not return. Ensuring their experience is fresh and relevant is the key to keeping your visitors interested and coming back. In this article, I’ll show you how to create a Scheduled Task in Kentico to notify your content owners when their pages are getting stale to ensure you provide the most engaging experience possible.

]]> Wed, 29 Mar 2017 06:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Adding Application Insights to a .NET Core Site in Azure ]]> Bryan Soltis Once you select Azure as your hosting platform, a vast world of resources becomes available. From CDNs to Load Balancers, Microsoft’s cloud has loads of great services to help you develop and maintain your applications. Because performance is king, adding Application Insights to your site is a great way to stay on top of issues and understand how your application is performing. In this article, I’ll show you how to add this great monitoring tool to your .NET Core applications.

]]> Wed, 22 Mar 2017 07:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Developing Applications Using Microservices and Azure – Part 1]]> Bryan Soltis As more companies transition to a modular development model, integration with different services and platforms has become a common approach in many projects. By leveraging multiple systems, developers can build out complex applications, incorporating functionality from several sources to accomplish their goals. Many of these systems are small, light-weight services designed to perform a single function or purpose.  In this article, I’ll walk you through the process of building an application using these microservices and Microsoft Azure.

]]> Wed, 08 Mar 2017 07:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Quick Tip: Testing Virtual Objects in Kentico]]> Bryan Soltis Kentico has many features to aide developers and editors in their day-to-day tasks. From CSS validators to logging, helping users find issues is essential to a good CMS. For developers, one of the most critical steps is ensuring that their code compiles and there are no errors. While Visual Studio will certainly help with your custom code, issues in transformations and other data-based objects are a little harder to find. In this article, I’ll show you how you can test your virtual objects within the site using some built-in functionality within Kentico.

]]> Wed, 01 Mar 2017 07:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Adding a Google PageSpeed Utility to Kentico]]> Bryan Soltis Every website should be designed to load and display information quickly. Regardless of the form factor, the content should be designed to be presented quickly and, of course, look great. Luckily, there’s no shortage of tools to help you ensure your site is as fast as possible. One of the most popular of these tools is the Google PageSpeed Tool. In this blog, I’ll show you how to easily integrate this functionality into your Kentico sites.

]]> Wed, 22 Feb 2017 07:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Using the Kentico Power BI Reports]]> Bryan Soltis Every feature added to Kentico is designed to improve users’ experiences with the platform. Whether they are developers or marketers, everyone’s time is valuable and ensuring a productive experience is key. As more and more roles are driven by data, providing employees with fast and efficient tools to consume and understand the information is important. In this article, I’ll show you how we’ve added support in Kentico for Microsoft Power BI reports to help your users track email campaigns and activities.

]]> Wed, 15 Feb 2017 07:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Searching Files with Azure Search]]> Bryan Soltis Over the past few years, I have spoken on Azure Search several times at user groups and conferences around the world. While many developers are familiar with Microsoft Azure and other cloud platforms, I’ve found many people still haven’t used Azure Search. In previous blogs, I’ve demonstrated how to integrate this service with Kentico. In this article, I’ll show some new functionality Microsoft added to the Azure Search SDK to index and search blobs (files) in Azure Storage.

]]> Wed, 08 Feb 2017 07:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Creating a ReactJS Site with Kentico Cloud]]> Bryan Soltis By now, you’ve probably heard a lot about Kentico Cloud and how it presents a new way to develop your applications. One of the greatest benefits of the platform is how you can quickly develop applications in nearly any language and leverage cloud-based content. In this article, I’ll show you how I recently used Kentico Cloud and ReactJS within an MVC site for a tournament website for our booth at CodeMash 2017. Oh, and of course it's deployed to Azure Web Apps!

]]> Wed, 01 Feb 2017 07:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Quick Tip: Pinning a Form to the Kentico Dashboard]]> Bryan Soltis Kentico’s Admin Dashboard is a great place to access information quickly and easily. By pinning applications to the interface, you can save users loads of time by giving them access to the information that’s most important to them. In this blog, I’ll show you how to pin an individual form to a user’s dashboard.

]]> Wed, 25 Jan 2017 07:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Adding a Bootstrap Button plugin to the CKEditor in Kentico 10]]> Bryan Soltis The CKEditor toolbar has been a long-time staple of the Kentico interface. As an open-source editor, it’s extremely flexible and allows users to update their content quickly, using a variety of built-in features. While the utility provides a lot of functionality out-of-the-box, did you know it was possible to add additional plugins? In this blog, I’ll show you how to add a Bootstrap button plugin to insert formatted controls into your content.

]]> Wed, 18 Jan 2017 07:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Announcing the 2017 Kentico MVPs]]> Bryan Soltis Kentico’s technical community is a vibrant and diverse mix of developers, designers, and site administrators. Among those members are several individuals who go to great lengths to help others and promote Kentico and its features. For their efforts, Kentico awards these dedicated members the title of Kentico Most Valuable Professional (MVP).  In this article, I will introduce you to the 2017 Kentico MVPs.

]]> Wed, 11 Jan 2017 07:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Modifying the Dashboard Styling in Kentico 10]]> Bryan Soltis Everyone enjoys when an application is familiar to them. Whether it’s the styling or imagery, providing a consistent and familiar experience for your users is a critical step in developing a site. Kentico has long provided developers ways to customize the interface and in Kentico 10 we made it even easier. In this blog, I’ll show you how you can easily modify the admin dashboard using your own styling.

]]> Wed, 04 Jan 2017 07:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[2016 Kentico Technical Evangelism Year in Review]]> Bryan Soltis As 2016 wraps up, I wanted to share with you some Kentico Evangelism highlights over the past year. Following an eventful 2015, the past 12 months have somehow topped the excitement scale with new conferences and events, product releases and launches, and a whole lot of blogs. In this article, I’ll recap all the activities we did within the Kentico community to bring you the latest information and keep you informed.

]]> Wed, 28 Dec 2016 07:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Building an MVC Site with Kentico Cloud – Part 3]]> Bryan Soltis In the previous blogs in this series, I showed you how to create a .NET Core MVC site and add content from Kentico Draft. I then showed you how to expand on the content types, nest modular content, and leverage the Deliver API to display multiple types of data. In this final post, I’ll show you how to easily add Kentico Engage to your site for activity tracking, add a contact form, and deploy the application to Azure Web Apps.

]]> Wed, 21 Dec 2016 07:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Building an MVC site with Kentico Cloud – Part 2]]> Bryan Soltis In Part 1 of this blog series, I showed you how to create content types in Kentico Draft, add content via the tool, and display it within an MVC site using Kentico Deliver. Part 2 will include expanding on the content types, adding more dynamic content, and updating the site to display the new data. It’s a good bit of code, but a simple process to get your site running with Kentico Cloud.

]]> Wed, 14 Dec 2016 07:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Building an MVC site with Kentico Cloud – Part 1]]> Bryan Soltis Kentico Cloud is a new headless CMS platform that you can use to build your applications. By leveraging an Azure-hosted content repository and APIs, you are free to develop nearly any application you want and populate it with your managed content in Kentico Draft. In this blog series, I’ll show you how I migrated my own site to MVC and Azure, while leveraging Kentico Cloud for my content and activity tracking.

]]> Wed, 07 Dec 2016 07:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Displaying Feedback Within Your Kentico Modules]]> Bryan Soltis Developing custom modules is a key part to many Kentico projects. Whether it’s integrating with a backend system or extending the capabilities of the platform, developers often create these interfaces to expose new functionality to their users. As with any UI, providing accurate and relevant feedback is just as important as the module itself. In this blog, I’ll show you how you can leverage a standard method in Kentico to keep your users informed.

]]> Wed, 23 Nov 2016 07:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Managing Kentico Application Settings in Azure App Services]]> Bryan Soltis Azure Web Apps are one of the most widely used options for cloud deployments. This is largely due to their ease of deployment and use, along with their vast customization options. In this blog, I’ll discuss several ways you can manipulate your Azure Web Apps to fit your needs and set up a fool-proof deployment experience for your developers.

]]> Fri, 18 Nov 2016 07:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Kentico Cloud Labs at 404]]> Bryan Soltis Last week, Kentico hosted the first ever 404 Conference in Las Vegas. It was a great week filled with a ton of interesting topics and sessions. Along with the presentations, attendees were shown an exciting new Kentico Cloud product that allows developers to use many of Kentico’s great content management features without installing them on their systems. As part of the announcement, we created two hands-on labs to help developers get started with these new services. In this article, I’ll provide you a description of these labs and let you know how you can get your hands on them for a test drive.

]]> Thu, 10 Nov 2016 14:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Quick Tip: Changing How Emails Are Validated in Kentico]]> Bryan Soltis Kentico has a lot of great capabilities out of the box for validating data submitted by users. For many companies, these default settings and configurations are just fine for running their sites and capturing information from their users. Occasionally, a company will encounter a specific challenge that requires them to modify how a particular type of data is validated. In this blog, I’ll show you how you can leverage a setting key to change how Kentico validates email addresses within a site.

]]> Wed, 02 Nov 2016 07:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Working with Forms in Kentico Marketing Automation – Part 2]]> Bryan Soltis In Part 1 of this series, I demonstrated how to create a form and implement a basic Marketing Automation process to handle when users submit their data. In this follow-up article, I expand on that functionality by implementing a custom macro and conditional logic within the process. This functionality will allow the process to be dynamic, resulting in different actions based on the user’s form submission.

]]> Wed, 26 Oct 2016 06:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Working with Forms in Kentico Marketing Automation—Part 1]]> Bryan Soltis Marketing Automation is one of the most powerful features of Kentico. By defining and configuring the process to execute automatically, you can simplify the marketing processes and minimize mistakes and issues. When combined with Kentico Forms, this becomes a very valuable tool to use within an organization and improve business processes. In this two-part blog, I’ll show you how to leverage several EMS features to achieve powerful and efficient results using Forms with Kentico EMS.

]]> Thu, 20 Oct 2016 06:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Four Good Reasons Why Developers Should Attend 404]]> Bryan Soltis You’ve heard Kentico talk a lot lately about 404. Sure, you know it’s a new conference happening in Vegas where experts focus on their failures and how they learned from them. But what you may not know is why developers should consider attending. In this article, I’ll try to give you some great tips on what’s in store for coders at the event, and why you won’t want to miss this exciting new conference.

]]> Wed, 12 Oct 2016 06:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Displaying Poll Results in Kentico]]> Bryan Soltis I’m pretty sure an hour after the first website launched in 1991, someone put a poll up asking people a profound question to get their opinions. Since then, polls have continued to be a great way to get a feel for how your users like a product, enjoyed an event, or any other type of survey. Kentico has a built-in poll module that allows you to place polls on your site easily and get feedback from your users. In this blog, I’ll show you how, with a little bit of JavaScript and API code, you can display poll results anywhere.

]]> Wed, 05 Oct 2016 06:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Creating a Filter Alternative Form in Kentico]]> Bryan Soltis Forms (or BizForms, if you’ve been using Kentico a while) are a great way to store data within your application. With a secure administration interface, you can allow editors and administrators to design and manage the form easily, all using the built-in application. In this article, I’ll show you how you can customize the form data interface with filters to help your users search and display data quickly.

]]> Fri, 30 Sep 2016 06:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Poll: What are version of ASP.NET do you use most often?]]> Bryan Soltis Welcome to your Friday Developer Survey!

]]> Fri, 23 Sep 2016 06:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Simplify Your Upgrades with the Kentico Upgrade Tool]]> Bryan Soltis Every new version of Kentico always has some changes that impact development. Whether it’s a new feature or the realignment of an API, there is no doubt there is going to be some updates that have to be made within your application. While this can be a daunting task for some, Kentico offers a great tool to help you through the process. In this article, I’ll show you how the Kentico Upgrade Tool can simplify your upgrades, and save you a lot of headaches.

]]> Thu, 22 Sep 2016 06:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Poll: If you had to use only one programming language, which one would you pick?]]> Bryan Soltis Welcome to your Friday Developer Survey!

]]> Fri, 16 Sep 2016 06:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Quick Tip: The Kentico NuGet Packages]]> Bryan Soltis The toughest part of any software company is getting people to use your code, your product, or your platform. That’s why so many companies rely on distribution methods like NuGet and APIs to get their code in the hands of developers. Because of its popularity (and because it’s so easy to use), Kentico leverages the NuGet framework to expose a number of packages to the community. In this article, I’ll explain these packages and let you know how and when you may want to use them within your projects.

]]> Wed, 14 Sep 2016 06:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Poll: What cloud platforms do you use?]]> Bryan Soltis Welcome to your Friday Developer Survey!

]]> Fri, 09 Sep 2016 06:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Adding the Kentico Draft Import Module to Kentico]]> Bryan Soltis Kentico Draft is a cloud-based service that gives companies a single location for web content production. Powered by a robust API and sleek interface, the service gives you the ability to enter content even before your site is complete, allowing projects to end on schedule and save development costs. One of the best advantages to Kentico developers is the free Kentico Draft Import module for versions 9 and 8.2 sites. In this blog, I’ll you how to add this free module to your Kentico 9 installation. 

]]> Wed, 07 Sep 2016 06:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Poll - How do you prefer to learn new info about Kentico?]]> Bryan Soltis Welcome to your Friday Developer Survey!

]]> Fri, 02 Sep 2016 06:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[2016 Ask the Experts #3]]> Bryan Soltis Do you have a tough Kentico question or challenge? Are you looking to extend the platform and need guidance on the best way to implement? The Ask the Experts webinar is the event for you! This interactive webinar consists of a panel of Kentico experts ready to tackle your toughest challenges. Covering all areas of the product, our experts will take your questions and provide guidance and solutions. 

]]> Thu, 01 Sep 2016 06:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Kentico 1 on 1 – Site Maintenance with Brenden Kehren]]> Bryan Soltis In this edition of Kentico 1 on 1, I sat down with DevNet rock star and overall good guy Brenden Kehren, of Kehren Development. As many of you know, Brenden is one of the most active members on the forums and helps tons of developers every week with their challenges. What you may not know is how much he works with maintaining sites, upgrading installations, and implementing new code for existing solutions. Because this information can help every company with their projects, I asked Brenden about how he goes about working with different projects in various environments.

]]> Wed, 31 Aug 2016 06:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Poll: How long after release do you start using a new version of Kentico?]]> Bryan Soltis Welcome to your Friday Developer Survey!

]]> Fri, 26 Aug 2016 06:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Using Azure Functions with Kentico]]> Bryan Soltis Microsoft Azure is continually being enhanced with more and more functionality that developers can leverage within their applications. From data storage to computing, there are a ton of great features available to simplify programming, offload workloads, and improve efficiency. Recently, Microsoft introduced Azure Functions, which is a huge benefit for developers. In this blog, I’ll show you how you can leverage Azure Functions to automate functionality within your Kentico site and eliminate resource-intensive processing.

]]> Wed, 24 Aug 2016 06:00:00 GMT