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Sitecore Demo environment - A (hidden?) Gem!

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A while back, I was in dire need of setting up a demo environment for an existing customer. However, whereas in the past we would simply setup a local environment based on the most recent ZIP file that contained the latest Sitecore version. Just attach your databases, change the pw, create accounts and then import the latest demo script / package that you could find. However (and luckily) times has changed ;) Nowadays we have started to embrace the whole of our composable and cloud-based platforms. Which means we'll need to provision an environment, make sure we have a Head up and running, have content in there, we look at the whole picture and make sure everything fits together really well. SO... I went to part of the community, went to my peers, went to Sitecore and got the same answer every time: Go to the Sitecore cloud portal and spool up a new environment. And that was what I had to work with... : Which is a great platform... No comments there! But this was not what I needed,...
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Sitecore Boost User functionality

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The murder  Recently, we were contacted by a customer who had been faced with an additional license cost by Sitecore due to excessive use of the Boost User functionality. For those of you who have never encountered this behavior, the documentation for this functionality can be found here: https://doc.sitecore.com/xp/en/developers/90/platform-administration-and-architecture/kick-off-or-add-a-user.html#increase-the-number-of-allowed-users However, the customer asked us (as their partner agency) to check or challenge this boost behavior. They wanted to know who and how often (in a more granular metric than a day) this boost had been used. The investigation At first I though this was going to be something quite simple. As Sitecore is apparently able to detect the boost actions as they were performed I assumed that they should be able to also track the IP, Username, date and any other related information. But as it goes... never make assumptions :) Sitecore told us that they can only se...
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Busy times & Sitecore MVP 2023 & Sitecore Search

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 I realize that things have been quiet here. But I have mainly been working behind the screens on Architectures, Estimations for new projects. And when you are busy... time tends to fly by :) Regardless, some interesting things have happened in the meanwhile!  MVP 2023 Starting with the most important one (and yes, I have screamed it out waaay before this blogpost through my socials...): I have been awarded the Sitecore Ambassador MVP title for 2023! This is my 9th consecutive MVP-ship, and I hope that I can uphold this stretch for a longer time still. This year, my focus will be on getting the most out of my renewed MVP-ship by collecting and sharing as much information as possible through the various webinars and enablement trainings that are related to the host of new products / platforms Sitecore has launched.  Sitecore Search Secondly, I have been investing some time into Sitecore Search. My first and foremost goal is to position it next or alongside platforms such a...
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Sitecore Symposium 2022 – Meet Every Moment - Small recap

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 Every year, Sitecore organizes their yearly worldwide Symposium event. This event has an outreach across all customers, technical & platform partners as well as all relevant representatives of the technical team that is building the Sitecore ecosystem. This event typically spans across 3 days, followed by 1.5 days of in-depth product and technical sessions offered uniquely to MVP profiles (Most Valuable Professional). This year’s Chicago-based edition was host to 2500 attendees, over 100 speakers and keynote sessions from October 17-20th. Since The Reference (EPAM) is a Platinum Sitecore partner with 3 MVPs, we attend this event on a yearly basis. The corona pandemic wrought its disruptor role here as well, causing this Symposium to be the first real-life event over the course of 2-3 years. As the market has shifted considerably over the last two years, due to technology advances and preferences such as Composable, Headless, SaaS platforms, lightweight platforms, no-code...
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Upcoming Chicago Symposium and The Guide into the Hosting Jungle

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I've been a more than avid Sitecore supporter over the last (almost) decade. I've been in the trenches with the team, customers and product teams more than once. And that implies that I have seen the Sitecore platform evolve from pure CMS into the experience platform and more recently into all flavors and options that come with the platform or that can be added into. It truly remains an enormously versatile platform overall! With the introduction of more and more new architectures such as headless, best of breed and pure cloud based solutions, the landscape did begin to change though. Which provided Sitecore with quite a challenge as they were not ready for this transition. Now, since the acquisition of Stylelabs / ContentHub, and subsequently all other platforms such as Moosend, Boxever, Four51, Reflektion, Sitecore acquired a lot of power and knowlegde and has since then ramped up its developing capabilities. The ultimate goal? To move into a SaaS(-like) platform in a first p...
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Awarded the Sitecore MVP for 2022 - 8th time in a row

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 I hadn't found the time yet to post this enormously valuable blog post. But regardless of when, I still need to add this. Not only as a validation on the work that was done during the last year, but also to honor all the other Sitecore MVP's out there. The last two year have been challenging, let's be honest. And all my fellow MVPs have continued their hard work, spreading knowledge, building up expertise, convincing customers and colleagues alike on the best approach and the best way forward with the platform. We are, slowly but certainly, looking at times where we can once again meet in person and start to exchange on even more information. Let's hope this year will be an interesting one for all of us, both customers, partners, developers and MVP's. More information on the Sitecore MVP plan can be found here: https://mvp.sitecore.com/ A big thanks to Sitecore for the recognition, it will not go unanswered!
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DRM in ContentHub pt2 - Intersections of contracts

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 Setting the scene My previous post was a pretty vanilla post on the use and features of the DRM functionality inside Sitecore's Content Hub. This post can be found here: https://kverheire.blogspot.com/2021/11/digital-rights-management-in-contenthub.html But, as with everything, the real intricacies really only show themselves once you start to research them or get actual business requirements and are able to test them out against the product.  The premise for this post is what I noticed when multiple contracts / profiles seem to overlap. So, as an example, lets say there is a specific element present in a picture. This could be a celebrity or a detail of an asset/article (let's assume a car).  In that case, it may very well be that two policies would apply: 1) The digital rights contract with the photographer who signed into contract for that photo-session 2) The rights attributed to the car or celebrity (or both) shown in the picture. What should happen? DRM on mul...
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