Ramblings on code, Sitecore and stuff
A little while ago I blogged about how to tweak the startbar in the Sitecore desktop to always display the database name. The issue with the current way in which Sitecore shows the database name is that it puts it on the desktop surface, so it can be obscured by application windows. And the issue with my little tweak was that it was incompatible with the Quicklaunch Toolbar shared source module I...
I was lucky enough recently to get my hands on a QA build of the up and coming Sitecore 6.4. And I’ve got to say, very nice. The improvements made in this release are very apparent and it shouldn’t take a great deal of persuasion to get your clients to upgrade, especially if they’re currently using the page designer. So here’s a highlight list of the improvements in Sitecore 6.4. Cross Browser...
I recently ran into an issue with Sitecore where the dictionary I’d configured for a language was being ignored. Whenever you create a new language in Sitecore a language definition item corresponding to the language is created at /sitecore/system/Languages/[language code]. One of the fields of this language definition item is “dictionary” and is filled in with the filename of the TDF file used by...
Today I created a new release of the Sitecore shared source Field Types project. You can download the new “drop 3” release from http://trac.sitecore.net/FieldTypes/browser/tags/drop-3/data/packages/Outercore.Fieldtypes.zip?format=raw or visit the trac page at http://trac.sitecore.net/FieldTypes to view the documentation. Not a great deal of updates to the module for this release. I added an...
It’s inevitable, whenever you talk to techies new to Sitecore, at some point someone is going to ask to look inside the database at the database schema. I always cringe when they ask, cause I know where they’re headed. The thing with Sitecore is you have an abstracted data model that you can think in terms of. You don’t (and probably shouldn’t) think about the data in terms of what is in the...
I’ve often seen (and experienced myself) people editing content inside the Sitecore desktop whilst in the web database. This is usually because they’ve swapped over to the web database using the database switcher icon in the startbar for some reason, like checking the published content (one of the activities in the SND course), and have forgotten to change back to the master DB before they start...
If you read the comments on my last post you’d see my memory was a bit fuzzy in regards to the Sitecore roadmap. Just to clarify, I got it wrong and Sitecore 6.3 is not the release to support massive amounts of content. And thanks to Adam Conn from Sitecore who has also clarified that “massive amounts of content” means millions of content items. It was Thomas Eldblom who mentioned the codename...
One of the things I remember being touted about Sitecore “Twin Peaks” which became Sitecore 6.3 was support for massive amounts of content. We’re talking thousands of child items in a single location. I’ve always worked to the rule of trying to keep the number of child items in any location to well under 100 items, and I don’t normally see more than about 30. John West recently also wrote some...
I’m currently working on a new shared source module that has required me to import content from published files. Now, I could try and talk around and conceal what it is I’m doing but it only really makes sense if you know exactly what it is I’m doing. And what the hell, let’s commit myself and the release of this new module to the greater Sitecore community. The new module I’m working on is an...
Recently I had to learn another CMS to create a site for a family member’s new business. Being that it is a commercial site I couldn’t use Sitecore Xpress for it. But realistically I’d been looking for an excuse to learn a new CMS anyway to become more pragmatic in my approach to developing with CMSs. This idea comes from the idea of learning multiple programming languages to become more pragmatic...
Once upon a time there was a great Sitecore blogger. He wrote inspiring articles and provided fantastic information and insight to the wider Sitecore community. His blog was a palace of knowledge and the villagers did bask in said knowledge. But alas one day darkness fell on this great blog. For the domain name for the site expired and the wise blogger was left yelling into the darkness trying to...
Whenever upgrading from one Sitecore version to another it’s always good to know what exactly has changed between the versions to ensure you don’t miss anything. The two areas you’re likely to find change that will directly affect you and your solution would be the configuration files, namely the web.config file, and the data, the content in both the master database and the core database. The file...
So what’s with all the silence? The Sitecore realm of the blogosphere has been pretty quiet of late. Perhaps everyone is still struggling to digest all that content from Dreamcore. It used to be that when Sitecore made a release everyone would be telling the world about it on their blog. But last week Sitecore released Sitecore 6.2 revision 10507, in much the same fashion as the 6.2 release....
Recently I was working on some DTO code that required setting a current value and an old value for a variety of properties on the DTO. The purpose of the DTO was to transfer changes to user details from inside Sitecore over XML to another system. But if a property hadn't changed then it shouldn't be populated into the DTO. And although the following is straight forward, it just felt like the code...
Recently Janus Boye posted a quick test of leading CMS vendor sites and how they faired using a mobile browser to view the site. I must say I was quite proud reading this list. Most of the vendors failed the test, but two out of the three CMSes that passed were the CMSes I use almost every day; Sitecore and WordPress. Now, the author didn't detail what the test constituted, but from what I read...
Unit testing in Sitecore always seems to be a hot topic amongst the Sitecore community, especially the new comers to the Sitecore game. And rightly so. Working out how you can effectively unit test your Sitecore code can be very confusing when you’re still trying to come to grips with a new system and it’s way of doing things. And it’s not immediately apparent how you can do such testing. I think...
Revolver is a very flexible tool for helping developers and administrators do stuff in Sitecore. Recently I was part of or witness to some queries about how to do some things in Sitecore that weren’t apparent, or simply cannot be done without your own customisation. These queries touched on 2 of the tenants of Revolver; these are to fill in the gaps of the current UI (in terms of functionality),...
Back in January of this year Jens Mikkelsen (fellow MVP) published a great article about publishing strategies in Sitecore. To support his recommendation about using a scheduled publish Jens showed a countdown timer displaying in the Sitecore taskbar. This Sitecore UI tweak really inspired me and got me to thinking about what other kinds of information could be displayed in the desktop and in...
Late last year I wrote a post exploring some techniques for sharing content inside Sitecore. One thing I didn’t really take into account was searching and indexing of this shared content. Paul recently left a comment on the post bringing this to my attention. Thanks Paul. So I’d like to address these issues now. The way in which your shared content is indexed will depend on the technique used as...
Well, Sitecore has just announced the newest members of the MVP club. You can read all about the 2009 MVPs and the MVP programme in Sitecore’s press release which you can find here: http://www.sitecore.net/News/Press-releases/2009/Sitecore-MVPs.aspx. I’d like to welcome to the club the following 2009 Sitecore MVPs. Guillaume Buat-Ménard from Aqueduct Jason Davey from Bullseye Sebastian Winslow...