It’s been a while since I’ve posted and the blank page looks scarier than ever.
SDN and SPN sites went live on Sitecore 5.2 two weeks ago, on January 30th; it’s not exactly ‘news’ at this point. It has been a significant change in a number of ways: moving to a latest Sitecore from 4.3.2.5, using asp.net 2.0 and weird web projects in MSVS.2005.
We’ve also integrated our security with Microsoft CRM 3.0 system - there are no extranet users in Sitecore itself, and everything being fetched from CRM database and turned into virtual users with appropriate roles assigned.
The last but definitely not least is the MondoSearch search engine and Behavior Tracking by MondoSoft that we’re now using on all three (sdn4/sdn5/spn) sites. More posts to come on this.
It looks like we did fine – there was no downtime during the change (although, uhh, server had run out of disk space last weekend... and, uhh, some exceptions were flying around a couple of times) and everyone had to bear with me and stop updating the site for less than two weeks only.
What we’ve gained from that is a better performing solution (no kidding) and a large amount of very-own-dog-food. The later is especially important even from my limited experience – hopefully I’ve did a number of good things along the way.
Database migration wizard received the most attention obviously, trying to make sure that it can handle all the little Sitecore 4 oddities I’ve encountered. However, It will not be released in it current form, becoming a component in new Data Transfer tool instead. It’s expected to be released pretty soon, from what I know.
The last few days were spent on capturing my ‘experience’ on paper; I’ll put up a draft soon, begging for feedback.
Now I need a bottom line, and it looks like “I RULE!” doesn’t fit. I’ll try this: if anyone is considering moving to Sitecore 5 from 4, let me know. Let me know what bothers you the most, let me know what areas you’d like to see covered in migration guide – I’m information hungry. Hopefully (for me) I’ll have something to share in return.