Sitecore Best Practices

This post describes few best practices that could be followed while implementing your website in Sitecore:

1. Minimize the number of Admin users and always remember to assign security access to roles. Try to use nested roles rather than creating roles for each different scenario.
2. Remember to change the default Admin password. Turn off the master database in your Production/Delivery Environments.
3. Do not provide any anonymous access to the files and folders unless required.
4. Try to log all your application exceptions and make sure to refer to Sitecore log file.
5. While creating Templates try to group your fields into sections and avoid using more number of RTE fields since it has a performance impact
6. Try to set Standard values,which includes presentation details,field values,insert options, for a template. Use tokens as needed.
7. Avoid Circular Inheritance while inheriting any template for re-usability.
8. Wherever required try to use Caching techniques. Refer to Cache configuration in SDN.
9. Don't make any changes in Core Database unless it's extremely Important
10. Minimize layouts creation and use placeholders efficiently. An Ideal architecture would consists not more than 2-3 layouts for one site.
11. Reuse your content. Use clones as needed.
12. Try to limit number of versions for an item.Sitecore recommends 10 or lesser versions on any item. I would recommend to install Version Manager to manage all versions. You can find the module here.
13. In order to maintain your content better use Governance model/workflows provided by Sitecore

I hope I have covered major ones here.... Let me know If I have missed any...

Any comments/suggestions are greatly appreciated..

Happy Sitecoring:)

Resources:

Sitecore Best Practice Blogs