There is something electric about the start of a new year in technology. That feeling of possibility, of standing at the edge of what comes next. As I look at what 2026 holds, I find myself more energized about our industry than I have been in years.

The Kentico Ecosystem Is Hitting Its Stride

For those of us who have been building on Xperience by Kentico, the past year has been remarkable. The platform has matured into something genuinely powerful, and the community around it continues to grow in both size and capability. What excites me most is not just the technology itself, but the caliber of problems we can now solve with it.

The evolution from traditional CMS thinking to true digital experience platforms has been gradual but profound. We are no longer just building websites. We are architecting experiences that adapt, learn, and deliver real business value. The roadmap ahead promises even more sophistication, and the developer experience keeps getting better with each release.

AI Is Changing How We Build, Not Just What We Build

I have spent considerable time over the past months working alongside AI agents in my development workflow. The shift is not subtle. These tools are not replacing developers. They are amplifying what a small, focused team can accomplish.

The conversation has moved beyond "will AI take our jobs" to something far more interesting: how do we harness these capabilities to ship better software faster? The answer, I am finding, lies in treating AI as a genuine collaborator rather than a fancy autocomplete. When you architect your workflows around that premise, the results are striking.

We are entering an era where a technology consultancy can punch far above its weight class. Where deep expertise combined with intelligent tooling creates outcomes that would have required much larger teams just two years ago.

Something New Is Brewing

I will admit to being deliberately vague here, but there are things in motion at Refined Element that I cannot wait to share. A refreshed digital presence is coming that better reflects who we have become. And beyond that, a new offering that sits at the intersection of cutting-edge technology and practical business application.

I have always believed that the best technology solutions are invisible to the end user. They simply work, enabling experiences and transactions that feel effortless. What we have been building quietly over recent months embodies that philosophy in ways I am genuinely proud of.

More details will come soon. For now, I will just say that 2026 feels like the year where several threads come together into something meaningful.

Stay tuned.

In my recent work with Kentico Xperience on a SaaS portal, I encountered a tricky issue that prevented the creation of new website channels. Despite numerous attempts to troubleshoot the problem myself, I could not get the admin console to load properly, and I kept receiving the message: “No website channel is running on this domain.”

 

After reaching out to Kentico support, their team dove into the issue. At first, they found no clear answers from the error logs. My local deployment was working perfectly fine, yet the SaaS environment failed to cooperate.

 

What made this issue even more puzzling was that my front-end website loaded without errors, but the admin console refused to display anything. This misalignment between the environments raised questions about middleware collisions or deeper system-level conflicts.

 

Kentico’s support team ran through an extensive debugging process. At one point, they even reviewed the entire source code, comparing it line by line. Finally, they identified the culprit: the order of middleware registrations in my Program.cs file.

 

In particular, there was a middleware conflict between app.UseKenticoCloud() and app.UseKentico(). The app.UseKentico() call was registered too early, which led to collisions that blocked the creation of new channels in the admin portal.

 

The fix was surprisingly simple but easily overlooked: changing the order of middleware registration. By moving the app.UseKentico() call to follow app.UseKenticoCloud(), I was able to resolve the issue. Kentico support also flagged a minor database inconsistency, advising me to ensure that the database is updated before deploying any new packages in the future.

 

After applying the recommended changes, I deployed a fresh package to the SaaS environment, and everything worked smoothly. This solution saved me a great deal of time and frustration, and I owe thanks to the Kentico support team for their thorough investigation and excellent communication throughout the process.

 

If you’re working with Kentico SaaS and run into mysterious issues, don’t forget to check your middleware registration order—it could save you some headaches!