Sitecore and Document Oriented Databases

I recently came across this article on Making Sitecore faster with MongoDB. I tried it out on one of or development servers and for text based content items it worked fine for me. I am having issues when I try to upload a Media Library image but that may just be configuration. If you have run into this or have any ideas why it is not uploading, please email me or comment on this post for what I am doing wrong.

Trying this out started me thinking about MongoDB vs other document oriented database.
According to this article on Initial Thoughts on Ravendb. Rumor has it that Sitecore 7.0 will support RavenDB.

Has anyone been playing with RavenDB and Sitecore?

Someone recently tweeted an article on massive. Does anyone have any more information on it.

If you have any tips, tricks or resources that regarding Sitecore and Document Oriented Databases please comment on this post or email Susan Fischer at susan@clinchportal.com

Slow Page Load and Missing Placeholders and Properly hiding SubLayouts

Sometimes when developing a page, you need to remove a sub-layout from a page temporarily.  It is very tempting to rename the placeholder to a non-existing placeholder sometimes simply putting an x or zzz on the end.  This will work to hide the items but you will get a performance penalty of 1.6 ms.

A better way to do this is simply clear the Placeholder field.  When rendering Sitecore will skip sub-layouts where the placeholder field is empty but if you place anything in the placeholder field then Sitecore must look in the layout or sub-layouts for the placeholder.  

If this does not solve your issue with the page loading then the other option is the Sitecore Debug.

If you login to the Sitecore Admin in Desktop view you will see a Debug menu option in the Sitecore Menu.

Clicking on it will open the site in debug mode.  Navigate to the slow page.  Once it loads scroll down and you will see the breakdown of components loading.  As well if you scroll down further you will see a trace.  Sometimes you will see warnings in the trace and this may solve your problem.  This is how I found and solved the missing placeholder issue.

If you have any tips, tricks or resources you would like to share please email them to Susan Fischer at susan@clinchportal.com

The First Sitecore Development book scheduled for release May 29, 2012

As a Sitecore Developer I can't wait to get my hands on a copy of Professional Sitecore Development By John West especially after seeing the following in the Amazon description.

• Addresses installing and configuring Sitecore.
• Touches on some of the more advanced features of Sitecore, including other APIs, pipelines, and configuration files

Once you have your own copy I would love to hear comments on parts of the book that helped you as they may direct others that have similar needs.

While we wait for the book release please check out his blog at John West - Sitecore Blog there is a lot of really useful information.

Toronto Sitecore Technical User Group is Meeting May 30, 2012

These user group meetings are great places to meet others working with Sitecore and to learn some new things
as well.

Here are the details:

Toronto Sitecore Technical User Group - May 2012
Wednesday, May 30, 2012 from 5:30 PM to 7:30 PM (ET)
Toronto, Ontario

Click here to register.  Look forward to seeing you there.

Sitecore 6.2 and Change Password link on Login Page broken

I found in an installation of Sitecore 6.2 that the Change Password link on the Login page was broken.
Instead of going to sitename/sitecore/login/changepassword.aspx it was going to sitename/sitecore/changepassword.aspx

The fix is to look in the \Inetpub\wwwroot\sitecore\Website\sitecore\login folder and open the ChangePassword.aspx page.  Search for "ChangePassword" Change the a href to read:


<a class="LoginOption" href="login/changepassword.aspx">Change Password</a>

This will resolve the issue and you will get the change password page.

If you have any tips, tricks or resources you would like to share with the Guild, please email Susan Fischer at susan@clinchportal.com or Chris Williams at chrisw_88@hotmail.com

Installing Glass

For fans of SkyRim you may know that Glass is the weapon of choice.  In the Sitecore Realm the same applies.

Glass Sitecore Mapper is an object mapping framework for mapping Sitecore items directly onto an object model allowing you to model your entire Sitecore solution as a data model. The framework handles converting data to and from fields and pulling data from related items.

Instructions to install Glass

1. Join the Glass Google Group.  Its the place to go for support:
   
2. Install Powershell 2.0 if you don't have it already.
   It is available at: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/968929
   
3. Install NuGet Package Manager for Visual Studio. Available at:
   
   http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/27077b70-9dad-4c64-adcf-c7cf6bc9970c
   
   
4. The following link provides detailed information on installing NuGet:
   
    http://docs.nuget.org/docs/start-here/installing-nuget
   
   
5. Make sure you open your solution in visual studio you want to install glass on.
   
6. Install Castle.Core from Nuget using "Install-Package Castle.Core"
   This is required because Glass is build upon these base classes.
   
7. Install Glass from Nuget using "Install-Package Glass.Sitecore.Mapper".
   If it installs correctly go to step 9.  If not check step 8 below.
   The following link has more information on how to do this:
   
    http://www.glass.lu/?page_id=462
   
   
8. When installing the package you may get an error like the following:
   

   Could not install package 'MostAwesomePackageEvar 1.0.0'. You are trying to install this package into a project that targets '.NETFramework,Version=v3.5', but the package does not contain any assembly references that are compatible with that framework. For more information, contact the package author.

        Don't fret it just takes a manual step.
   
   •  Click on your project and click on the reference to Castle.Core
   • Right click and click on properties.
   • Copy the reference path.
   • Remove the reference and attempt to re-add it by pasting the path you copied but remove the filename.
          Navigate up a directory and choose the net40-client directory.  You will end up with a path ending in \packages\Castle.Core.3.0.0.4001\lib\net40-client\Castle.Core.dll
   • Redo the install in step 6
9. Visit The Glass Google Group and Glass.Sitecore.Mapper Wiki and read up on usage.

If you have any tips, tricks or resources you would like to share with the Guild please email them to Susan Fischer at susan@clinchportal.com or Chris Williams at chrisw_88@hotmail.com

Sitecore custom error pages

In ASP.NET its as simple as a single web.config key (customerrors), but for Sitecore there
are a few added steps that need to be done like making sure your page is in the ignoreurls and
changing the other Sitecore Custom Error settings.

I found a really good article that walks you through this step by step:

Sitecore Custom Error Pages

If you have any tips, tricks, articles or resource syou would like to share with the guild,
please email them to Susan Fischer at susan@clinchportal.com or post them as comments.