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Using the Sync API in Kontent.ai

The Sync API from Kontent.ai optimises content synchronisation by providing content deltas from a specific point in time, alleviating API workload. It complements webhooks, enabling multiple applications to monitor content changes at flexible intervals. It allows us to track changes such as new language versions and content items, content model adjustments, workflow updates and basic content updates.

Jan 9, 2024

Seamless Rich-Text Content Migration: Transforming Inline Images into Kontent.ai Assets

Are you facing the daunting task of migrating your website's rich-text content from an existing CMS to Kontent.ai? Look no further! In my latest blog post, I'll show you a solution that simplifies the process, specifically on the intricate task of relocating inline images seamlessly into the Kontent.ai Asset library.

Sep 20, 2023

Changing Element Types in Kontent.ai

Changing an element type typically existing content to be migrated from one type to another in both published and unpublished scenarios.

Aug 24, 2023

Custom Elements Context in Kontent.ai

Custom elements help you to enhance the Kontent.ai experience with the tools you need to integrate with external parties and add features to your solution. Here we explore how to access the context of your custom element's content item.

May 16, 2023

Reacting to Element Changes in Kontent.ai

Custom elements help you to enhance the Kontent.ai experience with the tools you need to integrate with external parties and add features to your solution. Here we explore reacting to changes in the value of elements within your content items.

Apr 17, 2023

Creating a Simple Custom Element for Kontent.ai

Custom elements give us the ability to blend the content that we manage with external sources to tailor integrations to suit our needs. In this article, I'll explore the basics of how we can make this work.

Mar 30, 2023

Internationalisation, Localisation, & Translation

Internationalisation, localisation, and translation are three words that come up a lot when planning a project with global reach. Often used interchangeably, that mean different things and should be addressed at different points in your project.

Jan 2, 2023

3 Considerations for Translating Content

Translating content is an important task for organisations that want to reach a global audience. By using a CMS, such as Kontent.ai, users can easily create and manage their content across multiple channels. However, translating this content into different languages can be a challenge.

Dec 14, 2022

Getting the latest content

The Kontent.ai delivery API enables us to retrieve content from the CMS easily. For content that updates regularly, via the management API or frequent content updates it also provides a way to ensure that the content being retrieved is not stale. It's an easy feature to use so long as you know how and when to use it.

Oct 30, 2022

Introducing Postman Flows

Postman Flows is a visual API workflow builder. It allows you to connect APIs logically by chaining requests, handling data, processing data. This is low-code tool that can help you quickly build out workflows without touching your IDE.

Jul 26, 2022

How to Bulk Update Content Types in Kontent by Kentico

Mature projects in any CMS will have a large number of content types. Maintaining those with scripts makes changes to that model more repeatable, but it can be overwhelming if you need to update a lot of types. You can leverage the management API in Kontent by Kentico to update multiple content types in a single script to lessen your workload.

Jun 17, 2022

How to use next/image with cloud providers

Using the next/image component in your site is a quick and easy way to add responsive images. If you're using a cloud-based asset management platform, you need to make sure that you configure it properly in order to get the best performance and benefit from the features that maybe be provided.

May 18, 2022

Using the REST Client in Visual Studio Code

Getting ready to test a new service or API for your project is a common requirement. Normally we’d just create something in PostMan or run a curl command straight from the terminal. But what if you could do something that becomes part of your project in source control instead, wouldn’t that be pretty neat? This is where the REST Client for Visual Studio Code comes in useful.

Jul 28, 2021

Prepared with what you need to succeed with Kontent in .NET?

How do you find the resources that your development team will need to get up and running with Kentico Kontent in .NET?

Mar 22, 2021

Returning to .NET

I've had a website built in Gatsby for a while now, but I really did miss having it in .NET. Here's how and why I moved to a .NET static-site instead of Gatsby.

Mar 11, 2021

The Unhandled Exception Podcast: Kentico Kontent Headless CMS and JAMStack

unhandledexceptionpodcast.com

Dan Clarke and I took some time out to talk about Kentico Kontent, JAMStack, and .NET Oxford as well as a few other topics

Feb 27, 2021

Using Kentico Kontent in LINQPad

dev.to

LINQPad is a great way to quickly try out .NET snippets of code. In this video, I'll show you how to use Kentico Kontent's Delivery SDK with LINQPad to quickly check out your content models without usual the ceremony of setting up a new project.

Feb 26, 2021

Using Preview in Kentico Kontent on your Local Development Site

dev.to

See how you can share your local development environment with your remote team using ngrok, enabling your content team to preview new features before they are committed.

Sep 30, 2020

Creating a .gitignore file using the .NET Core SDK

dev.to

See how simple it is to create a .gitignore file for your next project using the .NET SDK.

Sep 16, 2020

Use Headless CMS And Be Awesome

hackernoon.com

Take a look at what the headless CMS is and why you should consider it for your team.

Jun 18, 2020

Keeping your keys safe in JAMStack

dev.to

Working with Kentico Kontent and Gatsby has been a nice learning curve for me, as I pick up and build upon my front-end developer skillset. You can end up taking quite a lot for granted when you're working with .NET. Securing your calls to an API can be one of these things, as you add things like API keys to your .config files and make sure that you don't push those files into your git repo.

May 21, 2020

Using Kentico 12 MVC with Azure DevOps

www.ridgeway.com

Keeping your team and your project stakeholders up to date with the current state of the project is a great way to reinforce collaboration throughout a project and keep things on track. Using Microsoft Azure DevOps with the Continuous Integration module in Kentico 12 gives us the ability to automate a regular deployment to a shared build server.

Jan 31, 2020

MMT & GatsbyJS Meetup

About this time last week, I'd just published a post about moving to Gatsby from .NET Core for my own personal site and was walking to a Gatsby meetup in central London.

Oct 10, 2019

Moving from ASP.NET Core to Gatsby

There is no escaping the amount of traction that static site generators and JAMStack are getting these days. As a traditional .NET developer, you may feel that your skillset doesn’t contain the things you need to jump on this bandwagon and make the most of the benefits available. But is it really that difficult to get up and running with a new stack?

Oct 1, 2019

Kentico Connection 2019 (Brno) Review

If you hadn’t noticed, Kentico Connection came back last year, and this year’s Connection season kicked off in Kentico’s beautiful home-city of Brno. Having missed last years event in Prague, this was the first time I’ve been to a Connection event that hasn’t been focused on a product release, so the messaging was a little different to what I’ve been used to and focussed more on the direction that the demands on the market are heading and how those demands are helping to influence the direction of both Kentico EMS and Kontent.

Sep 23, 2019

Kentico 12 MVC Developer Training

If you're new to Kentico, want to get up to speed with the latest versions, or simply want to see what Kentico's MVC offering is then you really should consider looking at the Kentico 12 MVC developer training. This training provides a focused walkthrough of the basics of Kentico and MVC while you build a simple, functional site that provides a good base knowledge for starting your own projects.

Jun 3, 2019

Getting Started with Azure DevOps

Azure DevOps is a set of tools designed to help you take an idea, and turn it into a reality. As an individual, it gives you all the tools you might need to plan your project and as a team, it gives you the power to collaborate and drive the project forward.

May 22, 2019

Testing Macros in Kentico

Macros are a very powerful part of Kentico and can be essential when it comes to extending admin areas of Kentico and adding your own custom modules and UI elements. This simple - sometimes overlooked tip - will help you along your way.

Dec 7, 2018

Using Kentico CI and Git to help with releases

Iterative deployment of Kentico EMS portal sites can be quite a manual process. If you're not using things like Content Staging then it's likely that you've either got your own special process or that you're using Kentico exports to deploy changes. This tip may help to speed up that process.

Nov 30, 2018

Talk: Chatting with data

I was fortunate enough to speak at September's .NET Oxford event this year about chatbots. More specifically an exploration of the key concepts of taking a pre-existing source of data and using a chatbot to surface this to a user in a new way.

Nov 29, 2018

MVC Forms in Kentico 12 Beta 2

You may not be aware, but Kentico 12 is in Beta at the moment. Those who have a Kentico DevNet account and have had a chance to look at it will have noticed and tried out the page builder. What you may not have noticed is that the beta also has taken some of the great features from the page builder added them to a new form builder for MVC.

Aug 1, 2018

Using the Kentico Pages data type

Relationship names have been around in Kentico since I’ve been using it, and are a great way to create structure within your content. When Kentico 9 was released, it introduced the Pages data type, to build on the relationship names to prompt the editors to link up content and to allow related content to be sorted.

Jul 12, 2018

Azure search: a beginner's guide

In the .NET Oxford June meetup, I presented a beginners guide to Azure search for developers have not had time to look into it yet and may not know where to start. The intention was to show just how easy it can be!

Jun 17, 2018

Importing Content into Kentico Cloud

Kentico Cloud provides a simple clean interface for defining and creating content that can be consumed by multiple channels. Quite often you’ll have a lot of your content in a digital format at the beginning of your project, and - depending on how much there is - this content can be time consuming to enter.

Apr 30, 2018

Switching on AMP

AMP aims to deliver super-fast content for mobile websites. You've decided that you really need it; how do you do turn AMP on? In this post i'll walk through a method I've been experimenting with to deliver alternative AMP views in ASP.NET MVC with the Kentico Cloud sample site.

Mar 28, 2018

Reading list - February 2018

February has been busy (so much so that that I've not published anything since my January reading list). What spare time I have had has been spent planning further features for my website. During that planning, these are article that I found quite useful.

Feb 28, 2018

Reading list - January 2018

Each month, I go through my browser history to look at the posts and articles that I have read. It seems like it may be worth sharing these to help spread the love! Includes articles about Azure, GDPR, and Kentico Cloud amongst others (as well as a sneaky podcast).

Jan 31, 2018

Why I rebuilt my blog in Kentico Cloud

Rebuilding my blog in Kentico Cloud has been something that I have been planning to do for a good few months now. Having not really had the opportunity while trying to balance work with a hectic family life, Christmas and New Year 2017 afforded me some time to get my teeth into this project and to start adding some of the features and foundations that I wanted to really build this project up. This post is all about the things I learned along the way.

Jan 28, 2018

2017 Review

2017 feels like it has been a very busy year for me. Here is a quick round-up of some of the things I've been up to and some of my hopes for next year.

Dec 31, 2017

Training on Ucommerce for Kentico

In a previous post, I talked about how Kentico are entering a new technical partnership with Ucommerce to broaden the e-commerce capabilities available. We were originally waiting for Kentico 11 to be released (on December 11th, 2017), but it is available now for Kentico 10 already. In preparation for the bigger release, Ucommerce has been running some Master Class training courses to help get Kentico developers up-to-speed.

Nov 30, 2017

How to make featured items easy to manage

A common function of content managed websites is the ability to add featured content at an editorial level. For this to behave at it's best, it needs to be simple to use for the content editors and provide a quick view of the currently featured items.

Nov 6, 2017

Content is everything and everything is content

'Content is King', that's the saying these days isn't it? As web solution providers we strive to find better ways to manage content and present it to end users. As headless CMSs grow in popularity, do we need to rethink what qualifies as being content?

Oct 23, 2017

Why you should contribute to Q&A sites

As a developer, the standard approach when you get stuck on something is to open up your browser and Google the error code or problem. Typically you're going to end up with results from sites like StackOverflow. These are great resources, but do you contribute?

Oct 13, 2017

GDPR Support in Kentico 11

GDPR is a hot topic at the moment. Everyone is still working on what is involved, how it might affect their business, and what steps they need to take next. In Kentico 11, the team have been working hard on a GDPR module to make some of the involved effort less arduous.

Sep 18, 2017

Generic web parts for rapid development

Working with the portal engine in Kentico support the kind of rapid development that bring visible results to the client quickly. In this post, I'll show you how using a combination of Web Part layouts and Widgets allow you to create structured reusable components to add more velocity.

Sep 1, 2017

Kentico in technology partnership with Ucommerce

Today Kentico and Ucommerce announced their new technology partnership that delivers an additional enterprise-level eCommerce platform to the set of tools at our disposal.  What does this mean and how does it affect existing and in-flight projects?

Jul 7, 2017

Kentico London Roadshow

Kentico has moved away from their larger 404/Connection Conferences to smaller, regional road-shows. One of the advantages to this is that it opens up the event to more regional partners and customers. For the Ridgeway team, that also means it's easier to get more of the team involved in these events. because of that, three of us took a trip down to London to check it out.

Jun 8, 2017

Reading List - March 2017

Each month, I go through my browser history to look at the posts and articles that I have read. It seems like it may be worth sharing these to help spread the love!

Mar 17, 2017

3 things I like about Kentico support

Is something in Kentico not working as you would expect? Did you actually read the documentation to check you're doing things right and there is still a problem? Did you really check the documentation? OK, it's about now that you should think of contacting the Kentico technical support team.

Feb 28, 2017

Using hidden input fields in Kentico

I've often found the need to re-use a form throughout a Kentico implementation in more than one place. The problem this gives me is that I don't necessarily know where that form was completed. Using a custom form control blended with alternative forms makes this easy.

Jan 31, 2017

Building a blog in Kentico Cloud - Part 3

This third post in my series that explores some of the core capabilities of Kentico Cloud based on short pomodoro-size bursts of effort. This post explores RSS feeds and sitemaps as well as correcting the mime type of media files.

Dec 9, 2016

Building a blog in Kentico Cloud - Part 2

The second part in my series of posts about creating a new blog site using Kentico Cloud.

Nov 30, 2016

Pimping the Kentico forms application

At Ridgeway, we’ve often thought is that there are a few places where the CMS desk could make our lives a little easier. One of the little things - those one percent improvements - is in the forms application. Depending on what you’re doing with your form, you may want to simply display some text to the user once they’ve filled in the form to say “thank you”. The option we get for this is a simple text box, so everything you want to say goes in here.

Nov 25, 2016

Building a blog in Kentico Cloud

With the release of Kentico Cloud, I felt like it was time for me to have a look around and see what I could achieve with Kentico's new headless CMS. My MVC is a little rusty too; this should be an entertaining challenge.

Nov 17, 2016

Selecting random pages in Kentico

Every once in a while, we all need to do something random, and sometimes it’s even related to work. Something we came across here at Ridgeway was a requirement to pick out random documents from a collection to display to the end user. We found a nice little trick to pull content at random from Kentico using a standard pages data source.

Oct 27, 2016

Kentico transformation method performance

Using data sources and viewers (think basic repeater and universal viewer) is a great way to get information on to your page. The inclusion of out-of-the-box transformation methods make formatting the information and displaying something useful to the end user a much simpler task. However, you must take care when using some out-of-the-box features that you are using the most performant method available.

Sep 22, 2016