Does your Sitecore site need professional help?

To be clear, Sitecore is an amazing tool…If implemented correctly.  In the implementations, I have seen and been a part of, there are some good implementations and wow there are some bad ones.  

Here are some signs that your Sitecore site, may need some professional help.

Flat Sitecore tree:

• It is suggested that you organize your content in which makes sense to the content contributors as well as the structure of your site.  If any tree node has more than 100 items in it, then performance will decrease significantly.
• Solution: Try to organize your site early and often, working with your dev team to ensure site stability.  Also try bucketing, it was introduced a few versions back and it is truly an amazing way to find content as well as keep the performance intact.

Use of webforms:

• The webforms methodology is slowly (most say quickly) dying off in the .NET world.  It is heavy on the backend, as well as it is very difficult to handle session state appropriately.  Finding support will and already is tougher and tougher to find as time goes on.
• Solution: Convert to MVC.  Sitecore has really adopted the MVC methodology and the newer the versions, the better it has become.

Minimal renderings (or Sub-Layouts):

• This really keeps the site from being flexible without always having to involve development. 
• Solution: Smaller renderings allow for sections of the site to be built like a puzzle.  This also allows certain sections of the site to have little visible components as needed for mini-sites or campaigns.

Limited usage of the Sitecore datasource feature:

• This typically keeps a rendering from being dynamic and can mean some renderings are not reusable. 
• Solution: When creating renderings, you should always make them flexible and reusable – while towing the line of not being too complex for the Content Authors.  The use of a datasource to drive which content is to be displayed for the rendering is a way to reuse the rendering without hard-coding the source.  

Repeated template fields:

• Templates are just like little data table structures.  If you repeat data fields over and over in different data, then you will have duplicated data structures throughout your site.  Maintaining this becomes increasingly more difficult as it continues to grow.
• Solution: Practice good template inheritance. For instance, if you have a title field, create a titles_base and every custom template that requires a title will just inherit the titles_base template. 

Bonus: If you are on version 7.5 and below

Eventually support will end with older versions from Sitecore.  This means the main response would be to undergo an upgrade.  It will become more difficult to find specific expertise on the limitations of the older versions.

For more information: here is an interesting read:

https://www.cmsbestpractices.com/sitecore-best-practices/

Thanks! 

@kmacnbama

Sitecore Professional since 2009 and aspiring Sitecore MVP