1. Team Development Best Practices for Kentico CMS
Brian McKeiver, BizStream, Co-Owner & Kentico MVP

2. Goals Work efficiently as a group
Make your life easier as a Kentico Developer
Hone your craft, make your customers happier

3. Cowboy
Goal 1
vs.
Team
Most developers go through a period of being a cowboy, they sling code like a colt 45, shoot first, ask questions later, they feel like heroes. But working in a team can accomplish much more .

4. You don’t have to burn the place down
Goal 2
You don’t have to burn the place down
No Stepping on Toes, Big on Automation, Worry about the important stuff, don’t sweat the small stuff, have recover-ability

5. Gladwell’s 10,000-Hour Rule Goal 3
Outliers: The Story of Success is a non-fiction book written by Malcolm Gladwell 
Be a Craftsman!

6. When you see this…
Let’s talk about this over a beer

7. Here We Go: First Time Setup
Tools of the Trade
Local Workstation
Visual Studio 2010+
SQL Server Management Studio 2008+
Source Control
KenticoCMS_7_0.exe
Goal: Install Kentico locally
What do you need to work as a group ?

8. Reasons to Install Locally
Documentation
API CHM
Kentico Installation Manager (KIM)
Import Toolkit
App Pool Recycles are controlled
When building Kentico objects you frequently need to look up the API or Web Part properties.
KIM makes hotfixing and updates easier
Toolkit is very useful for updating data from spreadsheets

9. Source Control with Kentico
Code Considerations
One branch or many ?
Depends on team size and goals
Database Considerations
Leverage built in version control, check-in & check-out
Why external SQL versioning products may not work
We tend to recommend one branch of code
Virtual Files are new in 7.0 and can help with Database objects

10. Your exceptions are yours and yours alone
Running Local Code
Debug with VS2012
HTTP Trace via Fiddler
Your exceptions are yours and yours alone
No danger of breaking the build
Debug, Trace, Logging are all developers best friends

11. Shared Development Database
Key idea for Team Development
Kentico CMS SQL DB
Dev 1
Developers run locally for CODE but share the Kentico DB
Should we consider Collision – Free approach ?
Dev 2

12. Shared Development Instance
Running full copy of your site in TEST
Kentico CMS
Shared Dev
Make changes to settings and objects that are database only on the Shared Dev mysite.devserver.com
Ex – Document Types, Custom Tables
Dev 1
Dev 2

13. QA / Test Server Code QA / Test can see changes faster QA 1
Kentico CMS SQL DB
Dev 1
Pro – QA sees changes faster, easier to deploy
Con – risk of Dev breaking QA, How can we fix that?
Dev 2

14. Actual Code Slinging
Use both Localhost and Shared Dev, change Web part in Dev, JavaScript locally

15. Grow Your Craft Jedi Master Jedi Knight There is no Try, only Do -Yoda
Padawan
Youngling
Im going to show next how to help just not you but your whole team grow their craft

16. Naming Standards Matter
Prefix characters for project name
Followed by fully spelled out, descriptive name
Display Names
Upper Case with spaces to delimit words
Prefixing with a special character is recommended because the project specific or custom object names will roll to the top of the Kentico selectors.
Object Code Names
No Spaces, no special characters, Upper camel case
100% Relying on the automatic naming is not recommended
Use the word “Custom” in Views / Stored Procs
Use System Tables GUI in SiteManager to create them

17. Making it work: Custom Code Locations
2 Strategies
~/App_Code/<Custom Code>
project code as sub folder
~/CMSModules/<Custom Code>
~/CMSWebParts/<Custom Code> or
~/App_Code/_framework/<Custom Code>
~/_framework/<Custom Code>/CMSModules
~/_framework/<Custom Code>/CMSWebParts
Option 1 – import / export fully supports (deploy easier)
Option 2 – upgrade safe 100% you know where all of your code is that is custom
A little bit of personal choice here
Floats to top

18. Making it work: Site Settings
Kentico Site Settings for Team Dev
Check in - check out (Object Lock)
Object Versioning
Blog Post

19. Object Locking & Versioning
Available for:
CSS Stylesheets
Templates
Page Layouts
Page Templates
Transformations
Web part Containers
Web part Layouts
* templates does not currently support storing on disk

20. Workflow for Content Tree
Use it always!
Gives you recover-ability!

21. “Undo Checkout” is NOT your Friend
Warning 1
“Undo Checkout” is NOT your Friend
You will lose your or someone else’s changes
Global Admins can always do this, on any object in the system, BUT DON’T FALL FOR IT

22. Warning 2
You will not be able to see Web Part settings if another developer has a Page Template checked out or if it is checked in.

23. Tip: See All Checked Out Objects
My Desk tab to the rescue!
Allows you to see all of your checked out objects in one shot

24. Virtual Objects with Kentico
Check out to File System
Can still use Kentico UI or External Source Control
Apply Changes to move back to DB
Enable on CMSSiteManager -> Administration -> System -> Virtual Objects

25. Virtual Objects: What it does
Use any IDE / Source Control client you want while editing externally in the file system.

26. Virtual Objects: How it Saves You
Kentico Cache and Object Locking
2 Devs land on the same checked in page template at same time
One checks out the template, the second goes to get coffee
One is working, second comes back and checks out
Two checked out copies because working at localhost
But you are using source control so when commits happen your repo should see a merge situation and help you manage the collision correctly and not lose any changes.
Commit frequently, clear cache

27. Virtual Objects Gotchas
Object Sync Message, respect it.

28. Deployment Mode with Kentico
When the deployment mode is OFF
location of virtual objects depends on the Source control options.
When the deployment mode is ON
virtual objects are moved from the database to the file system on your disk. Target folder is ~/CMSVirtualFiles.
Don’t have to use with Source Control options. I’m not a fan of using this. When the deployment mode is ON, the source control options for object types that useVirtualPathProvider are disabled.

29. Continuous Integration (CI)
Lots of Options:
Jenkins
Team Foundation Server
Team City

30. Automatic build and deploy capabilities
Value of CI
Technical Value:
Saves Time
Automatic build and deploy capabilities
Exercise / hone your craftsmanship
Adds responsibility to check ins / commits
Gives you metrics on code base
Reduction Staging errors
Analysis & reporting on the health of the code base

31. Reduces overhead across overall development process
Value of CI 2
Business Value:
Reduces Risk
Reduces overhead across overall development process
Provides better Quality Assurance
Raises project visibility
When a development team integrates their work frequently == less of a gap between the current state of the application and the state of the application as the developer has it. And so the scope for assumptions is reduced.
Notice trend

32. How to use CI with Kentico
Automatic polling
Build every X mins
Hooks
Build when events are triggered
Most common hook is: when a commit occurs
Most CI systems can spawn a Selenium Test
Automated /Recorded HTTP request
Behind the scenes we are really using MSBuild to call the csc.exe (csharp compiler) as if you were hitting the Build button in Visual Studio

33. What to watch out for in upgrade / hotfix
Files will be overwritten if you do not segment your customizations

34. Don’t Rely on the System Transforms
What if someone re-installs a Module ?
POOF
Cloning is your Friend

35. Deployment Options
Wah Wah it’s too hard because it’s got a SQL Database /cry

36. Import / Export (multiple)
You can choose to export multiple objects at once. This method is useful for deploying objects, aka a module, or set of Page Templates, however to be honest it is not the most robust mechanism. Not so much documents.

37. Import / Export (single)
Almost every object is export-able
Look for the small grey dropdown arrow to expand the menu

38. Import / Export Gotchas
Update Documents
Linked Documents
License Issues
WTF ?
Tip, if you get a red error message during import that says Invalid Web Site or Invalid license that means you need to make the main URL of the site in CMSSiteManager the exact URL that you are importing at, and NOT the site domain alias.

39. Content Stage One click deployment, YES Please! Sign me up.
Tip: Don’t get rid of ItemGUID, ItemModifiedWhen
Tip: You can control what gets staged or not from the task level by implementing DocumentEvents.LogChange.Before event handler or ObjectEvents.LogChange.Before

40. Content Stage Gotchas
Stage a task while target server has it checked out **
Javascript Files in Site Manager - don’t go **
Custom Views / Stored Procs - don’t go **
Tasks can get out of control
Large Files
(yes this is a shameless plug)
<add key="CMSMediaFileMaxStagingSize" value="1024" />
** Hint Hint Kentico 8 people
Tip: Make sure you have the url as the main domain and not an alias with a correct license
Tip: Sync All is a very dangerous button if you are not trying to stay perfectly in sync, which is true in most team dev scenarios

41. Web Farm Sync Sync everything everywhere
Good for initial step in project lifecycle as far as developers go
Also great for uptime and reliability in Production Environments

42. Deployment Setting: Macro Security
A note about Connection Strings and Macro Security
Ever seen this on your page ?
|(user)mcbeev|(hash)f2c eea6f50f961a af24e51cf154f75b f810dc0"
Use the appSetting key:
<add key="CMSHashStringSalt" 
value="e68b9ad6-a e3e-ece73f03dd02" />
Defaults to connectionstring appSetting Key, and that is bad because as you move from DEV to QA to LIVE you will have different connection strings

43. Team Dev: A Few Other Best Practices
Keep Zone IDs and Web Part Control IDs as short as possible. Use Web Part Titles instead
Avoid Ad-hoc Templates, other devs won’t know about them

44. Working with the Marketing People
Yes even Content Admins have a right to play in the CMS
Separate environments for DEV and Content Admins helps
Use Content Staging to keep in Sync

45. Team Development is supported better than ever in Kentico 7.0!
Wrapping It Up
Team Development is supported
better than ever in Kentico 7.0!
Assimilate as a Team.
Resistance is Futile.
Team Development FTW.
You’ve Learned
Work efficiently as a group
Make your life easier as a Kentico Developer
Hone your craft, make your customers happier

46. Questions

47. Thank You
Web:
Blog:
Twitter:
@mcbeev
LinkedIn: