Roadmap 4.4

It seems the Sity Sync is for Enterprise only. So from the roadmap 4.4 main focus its Enterprice and E-Commerce. Sad I wished all other would have finaly gotton something for x-mas as well.

Markus

PS: Has the forum with the change gotton super slow or is it just my feeling.  I know it does not matter but reading is not as easy as it was (gotten older) and if you look a the attached screenshot it seems short titles are prefered.

Stange to me is that a input field for files gets added and the old stuff is still there.

Markus

I must admit, it took ages for the Forums to come up. This site is definitely slower, much slower.
It is probably running on Sitefinity 4.x, that's why. The text is smaller as well, difficult to read.
With regards to the Roadmap, what performance improvements are you promising? The customers are asking and I cannot answer them.
On a positive note, the site looks much better.
Andrei

---
Just checked and it looks like it is still on Sitefinity 3.7, my mistake, in which case it should be much faster.

Also, I got an email of my own post. How do you turn that off? Thanks.

Dear Andrei

Was that sarcastic?
QUOTE
It is probably running on Sitefinity 4.x, that's why
UNQUOTE

a) SF 4 does not have forums, remember
b) please don't give telerik any ideas of migrating the site to 4.x. Let them focus on SF 
 

<meta name="Generator" content="Sitefinity 3.7.2152.140:0" />

But what does a redesign of a site without upgrading to 4.x tell you. Right, it takes a whole lot more then a migration tool to upgrade a 3.7 site.

I liked the old design better and whished that all the workforce going in to the redesign would have gone into bugfixing SF and adding long missing features.

Markus

BTW. Getting notifications for your own posts must be a feature. Because someone testing the new forum would have noticed it, unlesss ....

Look at it that way. At least you get mail once in a while.

Markus

PS: I leard a term Ego Surfer. Someone who googles himself.

@Markus, no it was not sarcastic, just the way it is. At this moment in time, Sitefinity 4.x is much slower than Sitefinity 3.7. Having said that, version 4.3 is noticably faster. So Telerik is moving in the right direction, only I wish it would do a bit faster. In any case, if it was that bad, we would be here talking about it but be trying out other CMSes. The truth is, Sitefinity is still my prefered choice, and it takes much effort for me to say that.

Since I do not use the Forums module, I did not know that.

Receiving an email of your own post, gets your hopes up and then down again, which does not feel good. And yes, I have googled myself a couple of times before. Never again...
Andrei

Just to give @Telerik an idea... from inside the "General Discussions" forum, I clicked the 'Forums' link and it took 1 minute and 11 seconds for it to go there.
Thanks,
Andrei

The site sync only in Enterprise? Wow, what's the point? I'm not going to bring up the whole pricing issue but this product went from the "best bang for your buck" CMS out there to a CMS where apparently the "most popular" version is the $8000 version (I call marketing bull sh*t there). If someone is buying the $25,000 + (just a guess) Enterprise version, they're an organization with a huge team of developers can can write their own site sync tool, and their own module builder for that matter. The Sitefinity customers that needs this type of tool are the small dev shops that use the SMB or Pro version of Sitefinity. Again, Telerik will continue to cater to the small percentage of customers with deep pockets and ignore the rest of us.

Anyone else getting a really annoying horizontal scroll on the text box for entering posts since the update? Can I have the old site back please?
Phill

Is there someone who actually owns an enterprise license? Too bad, this functionality is also skipped from the SE edition :(

Yup. Have the horizontal scroll bar. Using latest version of Chrome Browser. 
The forum text editor is acting quite strangely.

What? Site Sync only in Enterprise? It doesn't say on this roadmap:
http://www.sitefinity.com/web-content-management/roadmap.aspx

That is a bummer unless they are purposely limiting the number of installs
to try it out on to work to out the bugs before making it available to the rest
of us. But I'm sure this is wishful thinking.

So that leave us with "Module Builder" as the feature in 4.4 to look forward to.
That is still a pretty cool feature to be getting.

Yah, that horizontal bar is really annoying...

But my question is then, if we don't get Site Sync, whats the proper way to get a site from my developer box to the production server after I make a small change and recompile it? Do I have to reupload everything, including the database if I add a widget or something? Thanks.

Eric

Hi Dan,
If you look at the price/feature matrix you'll see that Site Syncronization is only available on the Enterprise version. If we were wrong someone from Telerik would have spoken up her to correct us. http://www.sitefinity.com/purchase.aspx
It's a bummer indeed as it would be a very nice addition to all versions of SF 4.4.

I also would like to know the answer to Eric's question: What is the best way to deploy changes if one doesn't use the Enterprise level site sync?

Dear Dan
I don't know about the best way but i would like to share how I do it at the moment. It's sure not the pro way but works.
Server     : www.mydomain.com
Server DB: mydomain_db
Local       : c:\mydomain (contains the SF project)

Backup Site
1) I create c:\mydomain_1733 (version number of life project
2) I create c:\mydomain_staging
3) I donwlaod www.mydomain.com live content to c:\mydomain
4) I copy c:\mydomain to c:\mydomain_1733
5) I copy c:\mydomain to c:\mydomain_staging

Backup DB
5) I create backup of mydomain_db (db on server)
6) I download mydomain_db.bak
7) I create new DB on server mydomain_db_staging
8) I import the mydomain_db.back to mydomain_db_staging (on server)

Checkif Backup works

9) Change in mydomain_staging the connection string in App_Data\Sitefinity\Configuration\DtaConfig.config to point to the new mydomain_db_staging DB on server.
10) Crate new web on server staging.mydomain.com
11) uplaod mydomain_staging to staging.mydomain.com

Well now we should have a copy of our production site on stagin.mydomain.com pointing to mydomain_db_staging
Test if it works. If it does you know you would be able to create a backup from a)mydomain_1733 and mydomain_db.bak

Coffee Break
Now is the time to get some java or coke zero in my case

Update Staging

12) Download the new sitefintiy.lic from your acount for the new SF version and save it (I save it in c:\mydomain_staging
13) Download the new sitefinity.exe run it and import the c:\mydomain_staging project
14) Run Upgrade (again its actually an update from 1733 to 1855 or so - an upgrade would be from SB to Pro - but thats again just another thing I try to have changed)
15) Now I delete all stuff on staging.mydomain.com (I don't want any leftovers of old stuff)
16) Build your project (I don't rebuild because some of the dlls always get lost :-()
17) Upload the c:\mydomain_staging to staging.mydomain.com
18) Access staging.mydomain.com - to my knowledge now is the time when mydomain_db_staging gets updated. This takes some time. On shared hosting you might time out and that might be the reason why you could/should do it with your local express DB. I have a VPS and want to make sure it runs in live envirement and I don't need to move later with dbo. table owner error stuff (Gabes post)
19) You will be prompted for license file (remember we downloaded it in step 12)

Test if every thing works. If yes. We have proven that the update process would acutally run and work.
20) As from now I think you have two options

A) Since we have a backup in c:\mydomain_1733 and mydomain_db.bak we could just repeat the step 14 throuh 18 with c:\mydomain and www.mydomain.com and mydomain_db
B) We could make a backup from mydomain_db_staging download the staging.mydomain.com to c:\mydomain and upload the c:\mydomain stuff to www.mydomain.com and import the mydomain_db_staging.bak to mydomain_db

That's how I do it at the moment

Why

I like to do it on the live envirement because if it works it works! If I do it locally I still might run into troubles.
Also I know my way around my VPS to make new DB and Sites but don't have to much knowledge of SQL Server Management Studio and moving DB around.

Markus

PS: I would love Telerik to comment on this Simple 20 step update process. Any thing I am missing or could do simpler (but it has to stay fool proof)
PS: I know this is not what www.sitefinity.com/.../upgrade.aspx as from 1:40 minutes say. I need more then one click and I have to copy files :-)

Hello Marcus,

PS: I would love Telerik to comment on this Simple 20 step update process. Any thing I am missing or could do simpler (but it has to stay fool proof) 
I am sure you will agree with me that doing the things right always takes at least twice more time than just doing them, but this always pays off at some point. So yes, the process is long, but you can sleep well at night. 
There's one thing I want to ask you - if you have the site sync, are you going to perform backups of the target environment before the sync?

For any questions on the licensing and the feature matrix, I'd kindly ask you to toss an e-mail to our Sales department at sales@sitefinity.com.

As for the new web site, we are polishing things fast, so all inconveniences will be removed. 

Dear Georgi

So I take it that it's ok what I can do, since you pointed out that I can sleep well at night! Jeeha. I don't mind doing this, since it works for me.
Usually there are at least 5 ways to do it. So if I get one way right I try to stick to it.

Concernincg Site Sync. I work with small business so my licenses will always be SB or SE.
But if I had the site sync stuff. Yes I defenitely would make backups from the production site first.

Better safe then sorry :-)

Markus, what do you mean by 'gabes post' in step 18?

Hi

I can't seem to find a ‘subscribe to thread’ link even though I am logged in. Screen attached.

Regards

Dear Dan

http://www.sitefinity.com/blogs/gabesumner/posts/11-06-02/how_to_deploy_sitefinity_4_to_shared_hosting.aspx

Look for: Access the web site and troubleshooting

His description might be the better way to do it, but I found that mine works for me so its almost primate save :-)

Markus

Any ideas when Sitefinity 4.4 will be released? Roadmap mentioned mid of December so I guess it should be any day now :) Monday maybe?

Tweet hints at next week

https://twitter.com/#!/Telerik/status/147654825163759616

I received an email from Telerik saying that the launch of 4.4 is today, so keep checking, I guess.

@Telerik

Any news when it is going to happen? Need to finish a project for a client and want to do it on 4.4 rather then 4.3.

Markus

Sitefinity 4.4 has been released and no mention of any Performance improvements. @Telerik, any comments???

Hi Andrei,

The performance of Sitefinity 4 is constantly being improved and optimized with every single release. We plan to announce officially only significant improvements of the performance. We always recommend to use the latest version of the product.

Thank you for the exhaustive feedback in the thread, we are always making sure that your feedback is well received. 

Thanks Hristo,

Upgrading the project is not easy and quick, not to mention the risk as well. I only do it if there are significant gains in Performance. It looks like we might have to pass the 4.4 version by. Lets hope 4.5 will provide "significant" performance improvements and hence worth our while upgrading it.

Many thanks,
Andrei

@andrei
There wont be any 4.5. Sitefinity will go streight to 5.0 next year.
Upgrading a project takes me abouit 1-2 hours.
Testing is another story.
I don't think the performance is that bad anymore once the site has been loaded and you have changed your first page in the backend. Using Chrome is about the greatest boost. If you compare Chrome to IE8 you will see a tremendous speed gain.

Of course we can not force our clients to use chrome and sometimes even IE9 is not an option because they are on XP. But if you have a chance try chrome and you will be impressed.

I rather see true multilingual support (images and documents) then a speedgain of 10%.

Markus

This is so weird, I get emails through of my own posts, but I did not get your post @Markus. Is it under my control this emailing set-up, or does Telerik needs to check it out? I wish I could switch off emails of my own posts, since I already know that I have posted something on the thread.

Yes, @Markus, Sitefinity 4.3 was a very good step in the right direction. I was quite pleased with the Performance gained in that version. But it is not there yet (I mean far from 3.7, in other words the glory days). So I am very eager for another at least 20% from somewhere. That will make me happy.

Upgrading it for basic websites on the net is different than upgrading it in the industry that we are deploying Sitefinity in. We have to go through loads of paperwork (test specs signed, risk assessments, fall-back strategies, etc) to get through an upgrade, is not a lot of fun and at least a week worth of work. We can't say "Oops, please come back later...", it has to work. Therefore, I am not thinking to go through with 4.4.

I must say that Sitefinity 4.3 was more stable as well. It increased my confidence greatly. I am very happy about that, and I would and still am recommending Sitefinity to anyone that cares about CMSes. I think it is a great product.

So is that when the de-coupling will happen then? At version 5.0? I cant wait for the de-coupling to happen, because I think that will provide the greatest boost of performance. I think that will be a great turning point.

Thanks Markus,
Andrei

@Andrei
  I've reported it a week or so ago, they're trying to fix...the extra emails are a bug\issue :)

Other than a minor glitch where some new files added to my project during the upgrade were not registered (quick fix, but took me a bit to figure out what was happening), 4.4 was my smoothest/fastest upgrade yet and it has been my favorite experience so far of the 4.x line.