Sitecore v6.0 (Crestone) –
Our Website is Running on It – Why isn’t yours?
Sitecore Web CMS v6.0 (Crestone) is the newest version of Sitecore's flagship content management system that ships on June 30th. Horizontal Integration has been working with the Sitecore development team on the Beta version of this product and is now proud to announce the successful launch of www.horizontalintegration.com on this newest version of Sitecore.
Sitecore’s Web CMS 6.0, focuses on further refining and enhancing its core strength -- a great-looking, intuitive user interface. Sitecore's administrative interface is fantastic with the familiar Windows desktop interface in a browser -- right down to a Start button relabeled Sitecore -- makes content creation, management, and administration esthetically pleasing and intuitive to use.
On the functionality side, Sitecore’s Web CMS 6.0 makes a number of enhancements that will make it even more appealing to content creators and marketing departments. In addition to UI and feature enhancements, the newest version has improved performance, scalability, and security, thanks in part to running on the .Net 3.5 framework. In terms of customer base, Sitecore is currently the leading enterprise–class Web content management system built specifically for the .Net architecture.
Below is commentary from the Horizontal Integration Development team that has been working with and developing on the new v6.0 beta release of the software.
Confessions of a Crestone Install - Initial Findings from a technical perspective What’s it like to convert to Crestone (Sitecore version 6.0)?
Our development team was able to convert our site over to the new version of Sitecore v6.0 codename Crestone within a week (with a single resource dedicated part time).
There were a few code changes giving that .Paths.GetFriendlyUrl() reference is used a lot within our code base. Other than the minor tweaks and deprecated routine changes the conversion went along with relative ease. We manually rebuilt our content tree and cleaned up our template structure just to make sure their were no artifacts pulled over from the previous version.
-Horizontal Integration Development Team
Content Editor
Sitecore is first in class when it comes to content editing and management. Our technical team has looked at quite a few content management systems and in their opinion - no one comes close to the rich experience that comes with Sitecore. It’s a pretty powerful tool when a content creator can easily pick up on how the content editing tool works simply by its familiar desktop style interface.
The content creators and editors of the world will be very pleased to know they can now make changes to the website even faster than they could before.
Right off the bat we noticed a much faster response time from within the Content Editor when in the desktop mode with v6.0. This was a very nice enhancement and kudos to the Sitecore development team for making this change. We are always pleasantly surprised by the Sitecore development team’s ever present eye to detail. Actions within the content editor of Crestone have been well thought out and streamlined within the content editor which saves both the content creator and development time.
-Horizontal Integration Development Team
Structural Changes
Introduction of branches and say goodbye to masters.
Masters are now a thing of the past. Initially we were always a bit confused by the concept of masters and their relationship to and trying to mimic the concept of prototypes. We quickly learned how the “branch” concept works and were implementing this new feature within the first hour of converting to Crestone. This concept works well in designing structures of content or “branches” for placement into the content tree of Sitecore. Now you can design whole branches of content and apply them to the areas of your content tree. As where before you had to apply individual masters to each content node. This saves a lot of time for both the developer and content creators.
The concept of a Command Template allows developers to apply commands directly within the content editor.
Framework changes and conversion to Crestone was relatively simple. There are a couple of new sections such as a LinkManager class that now manage getting the friendly URL paths of items. All framework items that have changed are nicely marked with the .Net deprecated attribute flag.
Security framework is now based on the .net membership provider
Crestone is designed to work on the latest 3.5 .Net framework. This is apparent in the performance increase within Crestone.
-Horizontal Integration Development Team
Other Key Notes
- Fast Query is a new subset feature of the Sitecore Query that executes with SQL speed. This new feature dramatically cuts down on the time when querying for items within the Sitecore data structure. Please see Alex Rusakov’s article on Fast Queries for a more in depth review.
- The image upload utility has been re-written and gives a better user experience when uploading multiple images. A content creator or developer can now select multiple images from the file dialog or select a single image for uploading into the media library. Previous versions did not give a visual confirmation during the upload process. Crestone now displays a visual indicator on the upload process.
- Expanded menus for Sitecore fields are a timesaver when performing actions on media and content fields. A content creator or developer now sees all the options available without having to select from a drop-down list of actions to perform such as clearing or uploading an image. Yet another simple but powerful example on how the Sitecore development team listens and responds to its community of customers.
- Inline page editing now allows content creators to seamlessly access and change content right within the webpage they are viewing.
- Content validation for content items gives a visual synopsis on whether or not content is missing information such as an image missing alt tag information or content items containing broken links.
- Content Search box within the content editor allows you to quickly search the content tree for items. In short Sitecore CMS 6.0 is a winner and further strengthens its position as a market leader in the CMS space.
In short Sitecore CMS 6.0 is a winner and further strengthens its position as a market leader in the CMS space
Horizontal Integration a Minneapolis, Minnesota based consulting firm specializes in the Content Management System (CMS) domain. We are a technology agnostic firm, meaning we are not tied to any one software or technology firm, and prefer to use the best tools in the market to make our client's projects a success.