Tagged: quick

Tips and Tricks: Re-index item(s) faster

I recently came across a scenario where I wanted to reindex a specific item(s)/folder instead of the full content tree.

Typically I would have reindexed from Indexing Manager in Control Panel which takes a good amount of time to rebuild all items.

Instead, I chose the item(s)/folder, navigated to the Developer tab, and clicked Re-Index Tree. It was done in less than a minute!

This will rebuild the Item(s) to all the indexes in your solution and I feel this is very quick as compared to traditional re-index.

Note: If you don’t see Developer tab in the menu, you need to enable it by right-clicking on the menu and select the developer option.

Note: Same trick works with Web DB when you switch it in Sitecore Desktop.

Hope this helps someone. Any questions, leave a comment.

Happy Sitecoring.

February 10, 2020

Sitecore

Install Sitecore 9.3 (using SIA) quickly in 20 minutes!

I’m participating in Sitecore Hackathon 2020 for the second time. One of the requirement is to have sitecore 9.3 installed on your machine except for commerce . I want to share my experience how i quickly installed Sitecore 9.3 using SIA(Sitecore Install Assistant) in 20 minutes!

Note: No need install any prerequisites(includes Solr) manually, SIA will take care of it.

Preparation:

Download installation package (Graphical setup package XP Single) from here.

Installation:

Extract the file zip file downloaded and click on Setup.exe

Install the prerequisites if needed.

Install Solr 811 by filling Port, Windows service path prefix and Install path and Install.

Note: Make sure the port number is different from earlier versions of Solr installed.

Fill out site prefix, admin password(going with b, so easy to remember) and license file path.

Fill out SQL server instance name, admin username and password.

Fill out the Solr URL, System root and Windows service name

Note: Go to Solr URL to make sure it’s running successfully.

Select optional module SXA if you need. I’m going for it, time to explore SXA! Would be nice if Horizon is listed here.

Review the summary to make sure the settings are correct.

SIA validates to make sure the files look good.

Install. This takes around 10 minutes (you can get a coffee!). If it errors out, check out the log.

Yayy!! It’s installed. Is it easy to install with SIA? It’s indeed a great tool!

Check out the release notes for what’s new in Sitecore 9.3 here

Happy Sitecoring!

January 26, 2020

Sitecore

Install Sitecore 9.1 quickly in 5 easy steps

I’m participating in Sitecore Hackathon for the first time this year. One of the requirement is to have sitecore 9.1(Initial version) installed on your machine. So I want to share my experience how i quickly installed Sitecore 9.1 using SIF on developer machine in 5 easy steps. This post includes the prerequisites, preparation and installation.

Prerequisites:

OS: Windows 10, Windows Server 2016
DB:
- Microsoft SQL Server 2017 or 2016 SP2 – Supports the XM database and is the required for the xDB
- Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Sp2 – Only supports XM databases and does not support the xDB
- MongoDB Server 3.6.6 – This is required if you are going to use MongoDB for the Collection database or as a Session State Provider
IIS 10
. NET
- Sitecore XP 9.1.0 requires .NET Framework 4.7.1
- Sitecore Identity server requires .NET Core Runtime 2.1.3
- You must apply any available updates to the .NET Framework on every Sitecore installation
Search Indexing
- Solr 7.2.1 – Default search provider
- Azure Search – supported and recommended for Azure Cloud PaaS deployments only
- Lucene – Only supports content search and does not support xConnect.
Powershell 5.1 – for Installing SIF

Preparation:

Download installation package(XP Single) from here
Extract the zip file you just downloaded
Again extract this file – XP0 Configuration files 9.1.0 rev. 001564.zip

Copy your license.xml file (If you have enrolled for Hackathon, you should have received the file in email)

Now let’s begin the installation!

Step 1: Solr 7.2.1 Install

Check out Jeremy Davis’s low effort Solr installs. It’s pretty cool! https://jermdavis.wordpress.com/2017/10/30/low-effort-solr-installs/

If you want to take traditional approach(Install as service using NSSM tool), here are the steps

Download Solr from here
Install as service using NSSM tool

It opens the NSSM Service Installer like below. Fill out the fields.

Note: If you already another version of solr running, make sure to give different port name.

Solr 5 running as a service on Microsoft Windows

Step 2: Install SIF

Run the following scripts in Powershell as administrator.

Register-PSRepository -Name SitecoreGallery -SourceLocation https://sitecore.myget.org/F/sc-powershell/api/v2;
Install-Module SitecoreInstallFramework;
Install-Module SitecoreFundamentals;
Update-Module SitecoreInstallFramework;
Update-Module SitecoreFundamentals;
Import-Module SitecoreFundamentals -Force;
Import-Module SitecoreInstallFramework -Force;

Step 3: Update config files

Update the following files in the folder with the exact information – solr path, solr service name, configsets path, instance name for sitecore, SQL instance name and login credentials.