Read, Watch, Create now indexing Sitecore videos on YouTube

Read, Watch, Create have now started indexing youtube specifically for technical topic videos related to Microsoft Project, TFS, Sharepoint, Dynamics CRM and Sitecore.  They are hoping to do the same for channel 9 and other video sources.

If anyone knows any good feeds for channel 9 or other video sources hopefully rss or atom please email them to chrisw_88@hotmail.com

New England Sitecore User Group presenting Responsive Design

This should be a really good presentation.  If you are in the Boston Area you should check it out.

Register via meetup for the Sitecore User Group New England

The April New England Sitecore User Group will feature a panel presentation and discussion from ISITE Design’s battle-tested User Experience and Sitecore Development teams that explore the many considerations that go into planning, designing and developing responsive and mobile-friendly Sitecore experiences.

The teams will look at real-world projects with example deliverables, code and approaches for a variety of scenarios. We’ll look at trade-offs in the development processes, approaches to adaptive vs. responsive and the experience-based planning and content strategy necessary for success. Rock-star Sitecore developers are only part of the equation when it comes to making responsive design work with Sitecore.

I hope the slides or a youtube of the presentation will be available.

Software is eating the mall? It is happening now. Are you ready for it?

Mall traffic has been dropping.  This has been especially noticeable during the Pre-Holiday Season.  The volume of Black Friday and Cyber Mondays have been constant.  I am still getting Cyber Monday newsletters and its April.

The latest article on Tech Crunch describes this in more detail.

Software is eating the Mall

The divide is growing between stores that have online presence and e-commerce and those who do not.  It is not as complex as it seems.

Sitecore and Active Commerce are a great way to build a flexible yet simple solution especially if you are a large business needing integration with back end systems for inventory control and online purchasing.

Small business needing a presence on a budget can implement simple solutions using open-source or more affordable CMS solutions with PayPal Integration.

Finding the right partner can make all the difference.

Contact me at chris.williams@threepointturn.com for more information.

Install A Sitecore Package From Sitecore Rocks

If you are looking to upload a package using Sitecore Rocks Visual Studio Plug-In you can do so by:

1)  Opening Visual Studio, clicking on SITECORE menu option.  

2) Click on Sitecore Explorer

 3) Click on the connection you want to install the package on.  If not connected then connect to it.  If connected choose Manage Packages.

4) In here you can create a package, upload a package, prepare anti-packages etc.

The anti-package feature is one of the most useful.

For those using commandly, you would use the Manage Package task

Installing Sitecore on Windows 8

If you are installing Sitecore on Windows 8 you may get the following error message.

HTTP Error 500.19 - Internal Server Error

The requested page cannot be accessed because the related configuration data for the page is invalid.

Config Source:

 3337:     </modules>
 3338:     <handlers>
 3339:       <remove name="WebServiceHandlerFactory-Integrated" />

See the sample screen shot below:

There are few things to check that may resolve this issue:

1) Check the web.config file in the sitecore website directory for

Check this in the web.config and change overrideModeDefault from Deny to Allow.

<configSections>
  <sectionGroup name="system.webServer">
    <section name="handlers" overrideModeDefault="Deny" /> 

2) Open up IIS and click on the IIS Root Usually your computer name.  When you do you can click on Feature Delegation and set Handler Mapping to Read/Write.  You may need to do the same for Modules.

3) If this does not work then ASP.NET is not registered properly with IIS.  

NOTE: Executing the usual aspnet_regiis -i may not solve this issue on Windows 8.  

On Windows 8 this command now tells you to use Control Panel's Turn Windows Features On/Off. It's IIS\World Wide Web Services\Application Development Features\ASP.NET 4.5

Toronto Sitecore User Group - April 3 and NLC

The next Toronto Sitecore Users Group April 3 at Non-Linear Creations.
Register Here

Look forward to seeing you there :)

QuickStart: Resource Strings

When planning the Sitecore Content Tree Architecture it makes sense to place some content on a page.  Other times it makes sense to create Generic Content items that would store blocks of content in a shared location.  This content could be used across pages.  Other times there are content items such as Form Labels, static text for instructions.  These need translations, but placing the potentially thousands of them in the generic content folder would make it more difficult to manage.

The alternative is to create a folder underneath each site in a Multi-Site solution called ResourceStrings.

Under this folder you can arrange your resource strings by SubLayout name and/or whichever folder structure makes sense to make them easier to find.

If you use a fast query to find them then as long as the resource string name is unique you can place them wherever you want or reorganize them later as you please.

        public static string Translate(string key)

        {

            string itemPath = "FAST_" + Context.Language + "_" + Context.Site.ContentStartPath + "/ResourceStrings//*[@Key = '" + key + "']";

            if (CacheManager.GetData(itemPath) != null)

            {

                return CacheManager.GetData(itemPath) as string;

            }

            string result = string.Empty;

            Sitecore.Data.Items.Item[] dictionaryItems = Sitecore.Context.Database.

                    SelectItems("fast:" + Sitecore.Context.Site.ContentStartPath + "/ResourceStrings//*[@Key = '" + key + "']");

            if (dictionaryItems != null && dictionaryItems.Length > 0)

            {

                // bad entry should fail gracefully.

                try

                {

                    result = dictionaryItems[0].Fields["Phrase"].Value;

                }

                catch

                {

                    result = string.Empty;

                }

            }            

            CacheManager.Add(itemPath, result, CacheItemPriority.Normal, null, new SlidingTime(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(SiteSettings.ItemCacheInSeconds)));

            return result;

        }

Note that this example uses CacheManager.  This is simply the Microsoft Practices Cache Manager.

In order to support the content editor you would need to wrap the controls you are using to display them in sc:editframe I am actually working on a QuickStart Package that would include a series of controls that loosely wrap the standard Sitecore and .NET controls with the ability to supply a resource string.

The Resource Strings Module is now available in the Sitecore Marketplace with full source code.
This should help you get started.  If you are using Sitecore 7 you may want to take advantage of LINQ in Sitecore over FAST to make the code more readable and to piggy back on any optimizations Sitecore makes in the LINQ Provider.

If you have any tips, tricks or resources you want to share with the Guild or simply have a Sitecore question email me at sitecoreguild@outlook.com or chris.williams@threepointturn.com