Long Days

My team and I have put in five weeks straight of 80+ hours each. We have three awesome new sites coming soon to our Sitecore CMS environment. Well, thanks to the helpful work of LightMaker USA one will be handled for us.

We're reaching into the mobile world and bringing each of our Track websites into that space. First one will be live next week. Then we have a 2-4-1. our largest website will be moving into Sitecore. It's both a leader in the motorsports news industry and superior statistical site for all types of racing information.

This last one has been a huge challenge. We've built a brand new stats engine from the ground up. over 50 years of racing data is being migrated from an antique classic ASP tool to a Microsoft .net MVC 2 application.

I have to say we've learned a lot in the last few months and still have a lot more to learn. It's been an extremely busy time but we're almost there.

Vacation Fun

Ok back to the grind had a long 5 day break with the family in Tampa and Orlando. Got the big Sitecore migration going on for our biggest site. Planned to launch in September. Then we also have several enhancements to our existing sites and three other site migrations to Sitecore planned. Not to mention the Mobile initative.

On that note, we've looked at our progress thus far and will start over with a new path. We need to create new layouts and devices for Sitecore. Not to mention alternatives to our modules so they will render out for those fancy iPhone, Android and other 3G/4G devices. Oh and don't feel bad if you have an older phone (like myself) we'll also have versions that render out for you too.

Sitecore mobile development blues

It's been a challenging couple of months, we have a stable and powerful Sitecore implementation with 17 active sites and over 114,000 published items. We are working toward developing a mobile rendering for our sites, providing news, schedules and driving directions. yet we haven't found any decent resources that cover the vast array of devices. It is much more complex than the old IE versus Firefox, Chrome, Opera and Safari design issues.

So many of the phones on the market today support HTML but it's frustrating how they all render content different.

Got any suggestions? I'll post our work and that of other Sitecore developers. Mobile bring so much to the table that we have to get it right the first time.

Writing Your Own Bio

There are a ton of sites out there that suggest they can or will help you write your own bio. I know not everything can be free but what is a person to do. If you are looking to spruce up your bio or need to write one for the first time I would suggest go to your peers. Check their own blog, Twitter or Facebook account to see what they say about themselves.

I'm refreshing mine for a conference I've been asked to speak at. It's been almost three years since I've looked at my resume and bio. Boy how things have changed. Thankfully some of my most favorite authors have been smart enough to keep their bios updated. Using the Web2.0/3.0 technology is one thing, but writing how you've used it can be tought ;)~

Sitecore Tune-up

The North America Dreamcore 2010 conference in Boston was an extremely fun event to attend. Not only did I meet a lot of Sitecore developers and Partners but I got to sit and talk with everyone from Sitecore.

One of the most interesting discussions was with John West. He is by far one of the leading experts in Sitecore tricks and known-how. He's got a great blog post about shortcuts and tricks for programmers. But there are also items that are useful to the end-users.

Motor Racing Network

Motor Racing Network: "Motor Racing Network News Desk."

Updated the widget, used to have the old ClearSpring sharing option. It's now using the AddThis widget. Much nicer interface. I like the clickback tracking.