Blog Posts

Mar 31

#031 - Kentico Kontent Management API Review

In this episode of Kentico Rocks, Brian McKeiver talks about Kentico Kontent's API capabilities. The goal is to talk about a lesser publicized Kontent API, the Management API. Brian discusses why you might want to use the Management API for importing content, reviews how to call the Management API v1 from the .Net SDK that Kontent provides, and demo's a real world Blazor app that upserts content items through the Management API v2.

Blazor, Headless CMS, Kentico Kontent, Kentico Rocks, Management API, Podcast

Mar 22

.Net 5.0 Preview 1 with Kentico 13 Beta 2 - A Double Phoenix

If you have been listening to some of my recent podcast episodes, you have been hearing how I have been excited for a bit now about the Kentico 13 Beta 2 release and how it sets up Kentico EMS for the future. You may also have heard me talk about the future of .Net and why it matters to the .Net development community and why .Net Core is better than ASP.Net MVC 5 on the full .Net 4.x Framework.

Well I decided to put my money where my mouth is over the weekend. I was inspired to give the absolute latest bleeding edge scenario of .Net technology a try with the Kentico 13 Beta. I wanted to download Kentico Phoenix, install a clean version of it, and attempt to run .Net 5 Preview 1 as my front end MVC live site connected to Kentico. That's right, to hell with the 18-year-old full .Net Framework. Sorry young .Net Core 3.1, I am even skipping right past you too. I'll take the 6-day old version of .Net 5 (the successor to both).

Or, as I aptly have termed this scenario, let’s create a Double Phoenix. Get it? .Net 5 is .Net Core reborn just like Kentico 13... Yeah, I know it's cheesy, but it’s a catchy hashtag for sure #DoublePhoenix.

.Net 5, Kentico 13, MVC, Net Core

Mar 14

#030 - JavaScript Unit Testing and You

In this episode of Kentico Rocks, Brian McKeiver interviews Ondrej Polesny, Kentico Kontent developer evangelist, and Michal Vanzura, lead QA engineer on Kentico EMS. Brian, Ondrej, and Michal discuss the value of unit testing for software developers, what's the difference between unit testing, integration testing, and functional testing, and review a few options for performing JavaScript based testing with Jest and Cypress.

Cypress, Jest, Kentico Rocks, Podcast, Unit Testing

Feb 26

#029 - Can JAMStack Do More?

In this episode of Kentico Rocks, Brian McKeiver interviews Ryan Overton Kentico Kontent developer evangelist. Brian and Ryan cover quickly how JAMStack is continuing to gain steam, but spend more time discussing the question of can JAMStack do other things beside just static websites. Brian then demos a GatsbyJS implementation connected to Kentico Kontent that Team BizStream has been working on that is multi-channel.

Gatsby, Kentico Kontent, Kentico Rocks, Podcast

Feb 05

#028 - An Interview with Sean G. Wright

In this episode of Kentico Rocks, Brian McKeiver interviews Sean G. Wright of Wired Views in the Akron, OH. Brian asks Sean on his development experience and background working with Kentico EMS, why he got started blogging about Kentico, and where does he see the future of Kentico going. They also talk about the recent release of beta 2 for Kentico 2020 and some new Kentico resources on Github.

Keep reading to listen to the latest episode of the Kentico Rocks podcast after the jump.

Kentico 13, Kentico Rocks, Podcast

Feb 02

I'm Speaking at Orlando Code Camp 2020

I'm happy to announce that I have been selected to speak at the 15th Annual Orlando Code Camp on March 28th, 2020 at Seminole State College. The code camp is a free, one day learning event for programming professionals and students with a focus on .NET and other related technologies. This year the Orlando Code Camp features 80 Sessions, 600 attendees, and multiple tracks on a diverse range of topics. I am happy to be one of the speakers once again (this will be my second time speaking at OCC).

My session for this conference, "Feature Flag Football with Azure App Configuration", has me excited because I think the new .Net Core Feature Management libraries are pretty useful as I had the chance to recently use them in a real world application. Keep reading after the jump to see the full session abstract.

Azure, Conference, Kentico Kontent

Jan 26

20 Things Developers Should Know about Kentico 2020

I actually can't believe how fast the new year came upon us, but here we are in January 2020. A new year means that a new version of Kentico is around the corner, and I feel this time around the release situation is a little different. You see I have been using Kentico for over 10 years now, and I can remember some special releases. Version 5.5 R2, version 8, and version 10 are right up there in terms of examples of drastic new releases for the best .Net CMS on the planet. They each had major differences over past versions (just think of how CMSDesk and CMSSiteManager merged into the new clean single Admin tool in version 8). But in my opinion, no past version or past major release can hold a candle to the upcoming release of Kentico 13, aptly code named Kentico 2020 or Kentico Phoenix.

I say that because there are so many things going on in Kentico 2020 that it is actually hard to keep track. That might be because Kentico has actually had more time than normal for this release, or maybe its because the technology stack in the Microsoft .Net world has had a seismic shift in the last 2 years with the release of .Net Core, or maybe because the people are Kentico are a talented, motivated bunch and want to make sure that Kentico EMS continues to be a market leader. Or maybe it's all three of those factors.

Either way, I thought since there have been so many announcements and updates along the way, it might be good to summarize the key aspects of the release that developers should be aware of it. So without further ado, keep reading to find out my 20 Things that Developers should know about Kentico 2020.

Kentico 13, Kentico 2020, MVC

Dec 11

#027 - An Interview with Dmitry Bastron

In this episode of Kentico Rocks, Brian McKeiver interviews Dmitry Bastron of the Delete Agency in London, UK. Dmitry's blog is dedicated to Kentico and he is an active member of the Kentico community. Brian asks Dmitry how we got started with Kentico EMS, what are the best parts of the platform in Dmitry's opinion, and why he got started blogging about Kentico.

They also cover a few recent topics around Kentico 2020, Kentico MVC awesomeness, and get into the pros and cons of using a built in module like Kentico Event management (hint, you may not want to).

Keep reading to listen to the latest episode of the Kentico Rocks podcast after the jump.

Kentico 13, Kentico Rocks, Podcast

Nov 19

I'm Speaking at MIGANG 2019

Tomorrow I will be speaking at Great Lakes Area .Net User Group in Southfield, MI, other wise known as GANG or MIGANG. I'm excited because GANG is one of longest running .Net focused user groups in all of Michigan and pulls in quite the audience from the Detroit area.

I'll once again be talking on how to Optimize Azure App Services. I like this talk because I firmly beleive that Azure App Services are the best possible way to host .Net framework and .Net Core sites. I can say that because we use it all the time to host our Kentico EMS and Kentico Kontent sites. I've also given this talk a few times this year, and feel the deep dive through the Azure App Service general and platform settings is totally worth listening to.

Azure, Kentico Kontent

Nov 14

#026 - Hot Reloading Kentico Kontent MVC Sites

In this episode of Kentico Rocks, Brian McKeiver walks through how to enable Hot Reloading of your .Net Core MVC site that is based on the fantastic Kentico Kontent MVC Boilerplate. The good news is that the Boilerplate and Hot Reloading concept are updated for .Net Core 3.0 and ready for primetime. A big shout out to Rick Strahl, as his .Net Core middleware package is what makes this all possible.