August 02, 2017 | Kliment Klimentov
There are a number of TDS Classic best practices that can, depending on setup and infrastructure, make the development process (and the lives of developers) much easier. TDS Classic can be deployed directly, or using packages, used with or without build server depending on the needs of the user. Our first four best practices, like using the Sitecore Package Deployer or using validators, are just as useful as our next four suggestions.
Link a web project to your TDS project to handle file deployments
Linking a web project to TDS Classic will allow it to handle file deployments (the build artifacts coming out of the web project) together with item deployments.
Bundle packages
When possible, use package bundling - it allows several TDS Classic projects to produce packages which are combined in a single update package that can be deployed to environments.
Use Delta Builds and Delta Packages
In order to avoid big deployment times, we recommend using Delta Builds and Delta Packages with TDS Classic - it will lower the amount of time for the build to complete, and also lower the deployment times significantly due to the lowered amount of items that have to be deployed.
Keep the number of deployed items as low as possible
In TDS Classic, you can manage which items to be deployed. This can be configured from the Deployment Property Manager. Setting the Deploy once property to items which won't be changed will significantly decrease your deployment times.
Ready for more? Check out Features to Improve Sitecore Development, download our Best Practices Checklist or try TDS Classic for yourself!