Getting Started with T4 templates

Recently, I had to troubleshoot an issue that involved TDS code generation of Glass mapper items. This got me looking at T4 templates, and I have been struck at how cleanly this is implemented and how good the MSDN documentation is (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd820620.aspx, which some of the examples below are from.)  I like stuff you can get up and running in a few minutes.

MongoDB Links

Recently, I've been doing a lot of research into MongoDB in preparation for a talk at Sitecore Symposium.  Here are some useful resources I've come across:

Switching Solr from port 8983

The canonical port for Solr is 8983, but there are circumstances where you may want to change this. For example, if you wish to experiment with a new release, or you want your various Sitecore development instances to hit separate instances of Solr.  Here are three options for changing the port number.

Solr Cores and Custom Indexes

My adventures with Solr continue!  I was working recently on a feature that required sorting results by the value of a field of a linked item.

Solr Core Discovery

I did a walk-through post awhile back on setting up Solr as a Sitecore 7 index provider.  One of the steps involved defining a "core" (also refered to as a "collection") to hold the indexes.  The way I described is no longer required, as of Solr 4.4, and will no longer work with Solr 5.  (Solr is currently on release 4.6.1).

Social Connected's SynchronizeData Task

This came up while I was putting together demos for my talk. I wanted to click a Like button, and see if I could get it to trigger a change in personalized content, without having to log back in. This might be helpful for keeping profile information current on browsers such as Chrome that keep you logged on forever.

A Quick Look at Git Submodules

I'm a big Git freak, as anyone who knows me knows.  Still, parts of Git scare me.  I only just got comfortable with rebasing (really worth learning, by the way) and submodules had been lurking on my "must learn someday" stack for a while.

Hold On, the Robot Wants to Say Something

Today was a work from home day, as I had to pick up my 5th grader after a week of Science camp.  I'm in the final couple of weeks on a project, and we have daily bug triage meetings to get the release out the door.  I IM'd my project manager asking whether I should dial in to a conference bridge or have him just call my cell.  "Why don't you use AVA?" he asked.

Starting on Roy Osherove's TDD Course

I've just started working my way through Roy Osherove's on-line series on TDD, and I'm impressed out of how much I've gotten out of the first hour.  Just the discussion of what values to put into a test was an eye-opener.

In the Agile Trenches (Part 1)

I've been interested in test driven development for a number of years, and recently it has become central to how I do software development.