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Posts from 2010

More Unit Testing in Sitecore Videos

I've finally found enough free time to record the continuation of my first unit testing in Sitecore video which showed how to add a test project to your solution which used the codeflood custom NUnit test runner. The next video was a little larger than I expected and I had to split it out into 2 separate videos. The first shows how to prepare your unit test fixture for writing tests by creating...

EviBlog 1.6.1 Released

I’ve just dropped EviBlog release 1.6.1 onto the Sitecore shared source Trac project room for download. You can download the release from http://svn.sitecore.net/EviBlog/Trunk/EviBlog/Website/data/packages/EviBlog-1.6.1.zip. This release fixes a minor issue with the Windows Live writer integration. Previously posts created using Windows Live writer would have the body of the post published into...

Optional project output copying using MSBuild

Different people have different approaches for structuring their projects. This is quite evident when working with open source software such as that found in the Sitecore shared source library where the project is normally setup with the preferences of the maintainer of the project. There are 2 major approaches to project structure. The first keeps the code under the webroot of your solution and...

EviBlog 1.6 Released

Today I’ve made a new release of the EviBlog Sitecore shared source module. Release 1.6 includes the following bug fixes: Comment display on website contains an XSS vulnerability. Used Microsoft's AntiXSS library to properly escape the content before putting it on page. User comments were being displayed as a single line, removing line breaks entered during comment submission – fixed User...

Unit Testing in Sitecore is Not Scary

I was chatting to another Sitecore developer the other day about unit testing in Sitecore. The impression I got from the developer was that although they knew unit testing could be done, they felt it was quite cumbersome and difficult. Possibly the length of my previous series on unit testing in Sitecore didn’t help the cause either. So I’d like to show you just how easy unit testing in Sitecore...

Sharing Content with Item Clones

In my previous Sitecore 6.4 sneak peek I gave a quick overview of a new feature in Sitecore 6.4 called item clones. These were introduced to replace proxy items which have now been deprecated and are likely to be removed completely in the next major release of Sitecore. There’s already been a few posts about item clones from John West: Sitecore CMS 6.4: Cloning and from Adam Conn: Cloning What...

The Customized Startbar Module

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...

Sneak Peek at Sitecore 6.4

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...

Configured Dictionary Being Ignored

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...

Sitecore Field Types Update

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...

Sitecore API vs SQL

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...

Display Database Name in Sitecore Desktop Always

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...

Sitecore 6.3 Performance Update

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...

Sitecore 6.3 Performance

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...

Realisation About File Formats

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...

Learning the Screwdriver

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...

Custom Item Pattern

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...

Sitecore 6.2 Rev 100507 Data and Configuration Updates

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...

Sitecore 6.2 Revision 100507 Released

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....

Using Properties in Out Parameters in C#

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...

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