I'm having a project where I have to migrate the data and UI from DotNet Nuke to Sitecore, for implementing 508 compliance.
Now my understanding is both share dotnet as underlying platform, so migration issues will be few. But I'm getting not much info. related with site core online.
So, does anybody here have experinece of such migration?
Need help regarding this, specificallly looking for content storage and technical architecture and potential I may encounter.
Thanks
The short answer is, it is going to be very complicated. Although both are based on .Net, their underlying architecture is completely different. You should consider either getting sitecore training or hire someone who understands both systems.
You'd go out migrating just like any other app migration. But the time it takes to do a proper migration depends on how much you know about both the cmses.
build sitecore information architecture based on new requirements
export content from DNN site in xml format based on sitecore template structure
import content into Sitecore site from the extracted xml files
Related
Hi i have configured the basics of cruise control to make releases, and automated nunit test using just MSBuild. Now i'm wondering if is possible to deploy/versioning databases with this?
I'm a beginner at CCNet .So if is possible some suggestions or tutorials (if there are) . Also if someone knows a free tool for database deployment/versioning let me know.. i will be grateful.
Thanks in advance
Hugh
It isn't free but SQL Source Control from RedGate can do what you're looking for, assuming it's a SQL Server database. It has a commandline interface that you can use in CCNet tasks. The easy approach of just migrating up is... easy, the changes are applied to your database schema / data. There was an issue with v2x of the tool that they've overcome with 3, which is that if you were to rename a table column then it would delete the column and create a new one with the right name. Obviously that's quite a big problem if you've got data you want to keep, so with v3 there's the concept of migrations and this allows you to specify alter scripts so instead of dropping the column you could script the change non-destructively.
As far as I know, at this time, they don't have anything that allows you to roll back your version.
Otherwise you could take a look at database migration tools, there seemed to be some promise for these in .Net at least. There is also this post that has some other tools (again for .net) and then there's this https://stackoverflow.com/search?q=database+migration+tool which is not restricted to any language but is general database migrations
If you're still looking for ways to version and migrate databases, one such tool is dbdeploy.net . I've hosted it on github after forking it and doing some work. Latest version is fully up to date and has some interesting features (done by someone who also uses it and sent a pull request).
We are done migrating a website from old CMS to SDL Tridion. We have thousands of clients out of which fewer than five are migrated. Now let's say we need to automate migrating the rest of the thousands clients, obviously we can not use manual effort. Is there a way to develop automated solution against SDL using any APIs it may provide? If yes where can we find documentation for APIs? Any Books or online tutorials for the same?
all very technical answers. Whatever route you choose you need to weigh up the option of not doing a technical migration (and trying to get that right) versus employing a load of students to copy and paste.
Regardless of the CMS, the complexity of a migration can be measured based on how organized is your content in the system you want to migrate from.
I categorize the migration into 3 types related to the Origin and Destination:
1--> CMS to CMS
2--> Database to CMS
3--> WebSite to CMS
If the original source is a database or another CMS typically the complexity is reduced, as the content is already structured.
You have to extract that and map the existing content with the structure that will have in the new system
If the goal is migrate an existing website into a CMS the complexity increases as the content is more disorganized that
having that in the CMS.
Again, if the content in the site is properly structured is still possible to automate that, but most of the cases are old sites
maintained manually.
There are commercial tools that crawl the content from the sites and apply patterns to identify common elements, common content, common metadata, structure
and are able to massage the original content and apply logic based on rules that allows to structure the content, however even the best tool has a hard
work to do when the source is disorganized.
Also I have seen migrations that cut the final html in pieces and put that in the CMS. That is an easy approach but of course a wrong one, as
you are not taking any advantage of the CMS
And 3 Types related the source type we migrate from and the source type we want to obtain
1--> Content to Content
2--> (HTML + Content All together) into (HTML) + (Content) separated
3--> (HTML + Content + Code All together) into (HTML) + (Content) +
(Code) separated
Content to Content Migration is less complex
Second option is of course more complex, as you have to Separate Content and HTML that will become templates
Third option is even more complex, as if you are extracting the html of the page (using an http client for instance as most of the commercial tools do),
you are not capturing the logic of the page. For this case you need to work at the file level
Try to do a very depth analysis before you enter in a migration, as things can turn complex.
Only if you have a very good knowledge of the original system and solid patterns to apply you can think in an automation
Tridion has extensive APIs and these are thoroughly documented. Your starting point for SDL Tridion 2011 is https://www.sdltridionworld.com/downloads/documentation/SDLTridion2011SP1/index.aspx
Automated migrations are perfectly possible, however API support is not the limiting factor here. Understanding your data in your source and target scenarios is much more important.
I would consider contacting Kapow or Vamosa who both specialize in crawling sites and then importing them to a CMS. They both have connectors for SDL Tridion. This may save your clients both time and money.
Every migration is different, unless you are migrating "thousands of" sites (assuming a client is a site) from same source type to same destination (SDL Tridion in this case) with extremely close data models. Several SDL Tridion partners are already solving this problem and built/building assisted migration automation tools. Get in touch with us if you need more information.
Increasingly, I have noticed the number of Content Management Systems in use. I have some familiarity with SiteCore. I have read some literature on Umbraco. I only just got wind of Orchard the other day. I have only heard positive feedback about EPiServer. I am soon to move into a role that uses it.
Do these differ vastly in features and price? What has led you to choose one (or several) over the others?
EDIT
I did a brief review of so-called free CMSs here: On Free Microsoft Compatible Content Management Systems
Reasons I ditched Orchard when developing a 50k page website:
The Orchard CMS import tool is simply too slow. It would only accept
small batches at a time. Initially, it took eight minutes to import
1000 records. So, working on that principle I expected that it could
take seven hours to import all the records. Unfortunately, I started
to receive performance issues as more records were inserted into the
database. I even started to reduce the batch size, which helped only
temporarily in the early stages. (See Saying no to Orchard)
I can only comment mainly on Sitecore and a bit on Umbraco from my knowledge of others using it:
Sitecore is an enterprise level web CMS with an "enterprise price tag." It's very extensible, has a lot of developer/community support, and is very developer friendly. The structure of content is based on a tree of nodes with parent-children relationships. Sitecore is well known in the WCM community as a leader in content management and is rated very well by companies sch as Forrester Research, etc.
Based on my previous research and conversations with friends, Umbraco is very similar to Sitecore. It has a lower price compared to Sitecore but its not a complete rip off. Umbraco is also built on ASP.NET like Sitecore.
Here's a three-part series on Sitecore vs. Umbraco from a developer.
Of the ones you mention above, I have only used Umbraco and Sitecore to build with and am certified in both. I like the way they allow me to build systems that really work well for my customers. They both have a feel that they simply give you building blocks to create your masterpiece instead of "modules" of functionality plugged in that give you a blog, forum, etc. They make it really easy to share content throughout the site and create really nice admin experiences.
Umbraco's community is really great. They both struggle a little on the documentation side IMO, but Umbraco's videos really help and the community is quick to help. Also, if you're talking cost then its free (Umbraco) vs. quite expensive (Sitecore).
But the reality is that each developer has their own taste and the style of CMS they like to work with. Ultimately, its the team that has to build the site that really matters most when it comes to how each CMS performs for the end user.
In addition to the links above, here are a couple blog posts that may help you get a feel for the different systems:
Orchard & Umbraco - Introduction (part 1 of 4) - Aaron Powell
Sitecore vs. Umbraco Terminology
Good luck!
I mostly work with EPiServer and Sitecore, and I can tell you the difference in short:
Sitecore has broader architecture and more powerfull UI. CMS is deeply configurable and highly extensible, it has clever publishing and caching system, powerful search and page editor. But it doesn't provide much out of box and UI is pretty old, slow and hard to learn. So this will be a long journey until you understand it good and make a good support of all its features for editors.
EPiServer is easy, friendly to users and developers. It provides an essential bunch of features out of box, has easy UI and page editor, good drag-and-drop experience, easy personalization. It is code-first, distributed with NuGet, provides dependency injection for its services, out of box MVC support. But it's not so extensible and configurable, has pure search (without expensive EPiFind module) and generally lower-featured comparing to Sitecore. So it's good for small/middle websites, but can be an obstacle in complex solutions.
Both have similar tree-item concept, rich documentation, pure public module system and hard UI customization. Both expensive and not open source.
As I know, Umbraco is pretty similar to EPiServer and Sitecore, but free and open source. Of course you get less features, more bugs, not much docs and no free support.
Orchard is really different comparing to other three CMS. It is module-based like Wordpress: you use standard or public modules and themes, instead of writing the whole website from scratch. You create your own themes and modules to customize the website and CMS. So entire CMS is highly extensible and provides a lot of free community modules. But in the same time you lose control and learning curve is much longer. Orchard is free and open-source, entirely MVC-based, UI and API are well done, but it can be hard for both developers and editors to understand it.
Wordpress vs Episerver:
http://tedgustaf.com/blog/2011/2/comparison-of-episerver-and-wordpress/
OK so the guy who wrote that is an Episerver consultant but it's interesting and balanced.
All the different web content management systems have different strengths. So which one is best for you depends a lot on what kind of sites you create, what kind of budget you have and what you think matters the most in a CMS.
For example, Orchard and SiteCore are VERY different systems.
I'm a bit biased as I work there, but I believe that Webnodes CMS have several important advantages over the systems you mention.
Keywords: Relations between content, actual classes for the different content types, custom LINQ provider for all data access, expose all content as an OData endpoint etc.
Microsoft used our CMS to demonstrate OData at Mix11. Video from Mix 11
I have got one project where I need to build a site in Sitecore CMS.
I have never used that CMS.
I want to know that if my programming skills are good because I don't know ASP or ASP.net but do know PHP.
The sites are simple html pages with no logins and processing.
Can I do it few weeks?
I was a PHP person when my company switched to Sitecore, although we had an ASP.net developer.
99% of what is done in Sitecore is achieved without any .net programming requirement. A website consists of data templates, which are defined in the Sitecore desktop environment (much like Windows, but in a browser). Data templates define the fields that each type of page has, the workflow it is in and other content-centric things. Renders are then attached to the template - these are xslt files which take the data provided by the data template and format it into (x)html.
I'd recommend getting enrolled on the Sitecore Developer Training - this is a one day course which will get you fully set up and ready to start building.
http://www.sitecore.net/en/Training.aspx
Sitecore v6 is easier to build with than v5. There's also SDN (sdn.sitecore.net) which has a large amount of documentation and examples.
Also, as Sitecore is only available through Sitecore Partners, you should have access to a knowledgeable Sitecore Professional.
Seems like it's real easy.
http://www.sitecore.net/en/Products/Sitecore-CMS.aspx
Sitecore Makes it Effortless to Create Content and Experience Rich Websites
Sitecore helps you achieve your business goals such as increasing sales and search engine visibility, while being straightforward to integrate and administer. Sitecore lets you deliver sites that are highly scalable, robust and secure, and is built to simplify your life, automate your processes, and let you deliver results faster.
Seriously, this question can't be answered as is. Sitecore CMS can be used by business users with no dev experience and it can be used by developers to do more complicated things. How complicated it is to use Sitecore depends entirely on what exactly you're trying to do. It might be easy, it might be complicated, but without more details it's impossible to know.
The general consensus is that devlopment of MOSS publishing sites, should be done using site definitions, Solutions, Features but due to project timescales we had to do all list/site column/content type/master page development using the SharePoint UI and SPD. We then used the contentdeployment wizard to migrate everything from devlopment.
Having done this, the future plan is to possibly, given the budget, change what has been built to use a site definition and features to get in line with best practices.
Has anyone done anything similar or have any tips on how best to plan for this?
Kind Regards
This is somewhat dependent on how large and complex your solution is. I was in the same situation with a project I started to work in. They initially started to do everything in SharePoint Designer. But when I was thrown in to the project, I decided to scrap all those changes, starting from the requirements and build up everything as site definitions/solutions/features in Visual Studio. In this case, it was feasible since the customizations were not too complex.
You can take a look at the SharePoint Solutions Generator, to see if that could help you as well. It can give you at least a good starting point.