No, not this…But this…Stay with us non-techies! This post is for everyone… What is Hashing? Hashing algorithms are mathematical processes that take an input, jumble it all around, and produce an output. That output is called a hash. These algorithms have a number of features:• The output is unpredictable - A change of 1 binary digit can produce a completely different output, and you can’t guess what that is – you have to go through all the steps to get there. • They are non-reversible – You can’t take an output, and figure out what the ...

If someone visits your website, you know there’s a good chance they’re interested in buying the products or services that your organisation offer. The problem is, they might not be ready to buy on the day of their visit. As a result, they might leave the site and come back later, or they might leave the site, never to return again! They might even completely forget that your company exists, and eventually, they might complete their purchase with a competitor! We often talk about a technology called Sitecore, a high-performing website ...

Back in October 2014, Sitecore was [for the fifth consecutive year] named a leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Web Content Management. Shortly afterwards, in December 2014, we wrote about the introduction of “Sitecore 8”, the most incredible version of the Sitecore platform to date. Fast forward 7 months and we arrive at present day, where Sitecore have been named as the leader, not just a leader, for “ability to execute” in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Web Content Management.For those that are unfamiliar, Gartner is an ...

Many organisations use marketing automation to some degree, but few do it well. I can’t even begin to count the number of times I've received totally irrelevant, non-targeted emails from organisations I've willingly handed my contact details to. Part of the problem is that it’s too easy for marketers to set up an automated Marketing process and call it good. All too often, little planning goes into the creation of an automated marketing scheme, but this is understandable because it’s hard to know where to start. Well, here at 3chillies we ...

We are proud to announce that 3chillies have secured the Sitecore Gold Partner status for another year, fortifying our position as a leading UK Sitecore development agency.The tiered partner scheme, first developed in 2014, categorises partners based on their technical ability and experience in developing high performing Sitecore websites. It allows prospective clients to easily identify a particular partners level of skill before selecting them to perform development work for their organisation.The award will be added to 3chillies' wall ...

We have recently been doing a number of Sitecore upgrades. In one of them, we have upgraded the system from Sitecore 6.5 to 7.2. After the upgrade, newly published News items didn't appear on their news page. This used search, and upon examination of the Lucene indexes, the new items didn't exist in the index.Checking the Crawl logs, I noticed an entry:4260 15:57:46 FATAL [Index=sitecore_web_index] Initialization of OnPublishEndAsynchronousStrategy failed because event queue is not enabled.This was a good first clue. The ...

Computed fields are a great way of storing calculated information while Sitecore indexes your items as opposed to using more resource to calculate it on the fly for use in your sublayouts/layouts.An example for when you might want to use a computed index field is if you imagine you have a couple of blog categories and you want to provide a count of how many blog articles that refer to that category. Granted you will be able to use the Sitecore links database (which we are going to use but not at runtime) or even facets which are provided ...

We previously wrote about why we love Sitecore 8, which detailed some of the main changes since version Sitecore 7.5. Amongst other improvements, the major release included a brand new user-friendly interface, improved Analytics, and embedded multivariate testing. Just 8 months later we have an improved version, and they call it…Sitecore 8.1!Sitecore 8.1 opens up the playing field for organisations who implement a strict policy against the implementation of first major software releases. But more than just exterminating the bugs found in ...

Sitecore’s visitor profiling capability tracks and collects information on customers in real time, at scale. Therefore, as a Sitecore user, you have the ability to track a user’s history of previous interactions on your website, and store it in a profile against that users's account (or IP address if they haven't signed up for an account yet).  Using the information held within their profile, you can form understandings and predictions of what that particular customer might like to see upon their next visit (…or even during the same ...

How to create PersonasMore than ever before, prospects are expecting to receive relevant, personalised information from your company. According to a report from Accenture, 73% of consumers said that they prefer to do business with companies that use their personal information to make their experience more relevant.We’ve all heard the term “Content is King” and that’s true, it is very important to produce lots of high quality content, but even excellent content can look like spam when it’s served to the prospect at the wrong time. Consider ...