codeflood logo

Posts from 2012

Common Redirect Exclusions

Recently my TDS (Team Development for Sitecore) install started acting funny. And the symptoms didn’t seem consistent between different solutions, so it looked like the issue was to do with those specific installs. When I tried to perform any operation from my TDS project with Sitecore I would receive an error about the response content type, followed by an error to do with the version of the...

Decoupling Through the Sitecore Event Pool

There are several ways to allow disparate components in a .net application to communicate. And usually it involves events. Standard .net events require a reference to the object exposing the event to connect an event handler to that event, in the following manner. var someObject = FindObject(); someObject.TheEvent += new EventHandler(MyEventHandler); How that FindObject() method is implemented...

Revolver 2, Released and Now Free

It’s been a while since the last update to Revolver so this release is long overdue. Today I have released version 2 of Revolver, the scripting module for Sitecore. The timing of this release is in preparation for Sitecore Symposium Australia where I’ll be presenting on scripting with Sitecore. Of course I’ll be covering Revolver and I will also be covering other scripting modules...

Adding Options to Sitecore Applications

Recently I was asked what I like the most about Sitecore. There are many reason’s I like Sitecore, but one stand out reason is it’s extensibility. I like how I can extend Sitecore’s UI and processes to add my own functionality or change how Sitecore works to meet my client’s requirements. So, extending the Sitecore UI. On a recent project we had a requirement to provide a utility that was context...

Redirect Options

I almost can’t remember the last time I built a website and it was the first for an organisation. The internet is old enough now that everyone already has a website, so new builds now are to replace an existing web presence. Whenever replacing an existing site we need to consider how the changes could impact on Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and in particular, how to maintain whatever rank your...

Custom WFM Action Settings UI

The Sitecore WebForms for Marketers (WFM) module is a great module providing content authors the ability to create and edit their own simple data collection forms without having to tap a developer. It comes with a range of prebuilt “actions” which act on the data being submitted through the form. The most common actions would probably be the “save to database” action which saves the submitted form...

WeBlog 2.2 Released

I’m happy to announce the next release of WeBlog, release 2.2, is now available. This release fixed a number of bugs across various areas of the module. I also spent quite a bit of time testing the more “non-developer” interfaces to the module. A number of updates were made to the Windows Live Writer integration. These updates ensure the appropriate ancestor folders such as those created by the...

Dynamic Roles in Sitecore

So what is a dynamic role? A dynamic role is one where membership is dynamically determined instead of statically assigned. The normal Sitecore roles are statically assigned to a user. They never change. Sitecore also contain 2 dynamic roles: the Everyone role and the Creator-Owner role. Inclusion in these roles is determined dynamically. OK, the Everyone role may not be quite so dynamic, but the...

Mocking Sitecore

Whenever I talk about unit testing and Sitecore, someone inevitably will ask about the practise of mocking. Mocking involves creating a simple object to replace a dependency in your unit tests so your test code doesn’t have to invoke that dependency. The issue I’ve had with mocking is that you have to deeply understand the object you’re mocking or your mocks won’t be a reflection of the dependency...

XSLT Inheritance

I like XSLT. Although if you’ve ever visited my codeflood website and had a look at my SashimiCMS you’d have guessed that. SashimiCMS is a CMS I created many years ago, all based on XML and XSLT. In fact, I currently use that CMS to manage codeflood. XSLT is a great tool for working with XML and transforming it. So it’s always a shame when I see Sitecore projects that avoid XSLT (renderings). XSLT...

Tracking Local Search with DMS

Sitecore’s Digital Marketing Suite (DMS) comes with some handy reports out of the box for analysing searches your users are performing on your Sitecore site. There’s both a high level report in the executive dashboard for site wide searches and also item reports for checking search terms leading to an item and searches performed on an item. All these reports assist in helping you work out what...

Filtering ECM Dispatcher

The Email Campaign Manager (ECM) for Sitecore is a great tool for sending bulk email and newsletters to your users and subscribers. I had an interesting question from a client recently about the Email Campaign Manager. “How can I send an email to a subset of the subscribers?” I’ll give you a scenario to describe the request. Let’s say I have a user base of national partners, but I only want to...

WeBlog 2.1 Released

Today I have made several updates to the WeBlog module for Sitecore and published release 2.1. Go grab it now from http://trac.sitecore.net/WeBlog. Here’s a few significant changes to the module. Akismet Does your WeBlog blog get swamped with spam? Are you wasting lots of manual effort on weeding it out? Then you’ll love this new feature. WeBlog 2.1 introduces Akismet support. Akismet is a...