How to Fix Duplicate Item Errors in Sitecore Content Serialization (SCS)

🛠Introduction to Sitecore Content Serialization (SCS) and Common Challenges

Sitecore Content Serialization (SCS) is a great tool for managing and syncing content in Sitecore projects, especially when dealing with multiple sites and lots of content items. But problems like duplicate item errors can mess up the serialization process, which can be frustrating for developers. This article looks at a real-life situation where duplicate items caused errors during SCS setup and how an automated PowerShell script using Sitecore PowerShell Extension (SPE) quickly fixed the problem.

📋What is Sitecore Content Serialization?

Sitecore Content Serialization (SCS) lets developers turn content items, templates, and settings into JSON files (.yml) for version control and deployment. It makes content management easier by helping teams track changes, work together well, and deploy content consistently across different environments.

🛑The Problem: Duplicate Item Names Causing Serialization Errors

While setting up Sitecore Content Serialization (SCS) for a project with multiple sites and running the command dotnet sitecore ser pull, I encountered a serialization error: Non-unique paths cannot be serialized. Please choose a different item name.