Some management

Maybe an unexpected non-technical post. But my primary role is a manager, though I'm not dropping programming and do some tools or investigations from time to time.

Have no idea if it's my invention or usual practice. At least I haven't read any "clever" books (I'm sceptical about most of them, but that's another topic).

Let's see:
  - One day a person saw our ads and came to us.
  - Now (s)he has own opinion about the Sitecore.

It makes great sense to ask people say what attracted them in Sitecore ads and what they wouldn't like to see there. Indirect feedback except for just improving the ads, isn't it?

Proper feedback is a key for everything.

That's what I have just asked our senior developers to do.

You are welcome to express your opinion about the idea.

Web Content Management: get data easy!

Web Content Management: one of the difficulties I saw customers faced with were moving data from their existing sites, based on "old" engines or even static, to desired Web Content Management systems, like Sitecore CMS. Often they dropped an idea of upgrading just because didn't want or couldn't put efforts to just moving the existing content.

I've just seen the demo by Stephen Moore from Kapow - "Migrating Web content into Sitecore: 8 Minute Demo". Now moving data to Sitecore becomes easier. Interesting things that data can be taken even from front-end of the existing site. It worth seeing!

Russian backend (client) for Sitecore 6.2.0

It took longer than expected, but it's ready now.

Take Russian backend (client) for Sitecore 6.2.0 at Sitecore SDN site

Please report any issues (with screenshots) you might find to me.

Sitecore content management system knowledge sharing

US market is probably the market that grows most rapidly for Sitecore. Large number of partners, solutions and developers. Developers, Solution Architects, etc - i.e. people - are the biggest values always. And Sitecore understands that!


I'm happy to see that Sitecore US will conduct large event for all Sitecore-related people - Sitecore Partner and Developer Conference Dreamcore - in Boston.
I'm sure all people will have fun :), but I'm also sure in wide knowledge and experience (and ideas as well) sharing. I won't be able to come myself, but this is what I expect personally - get new ideas and hear more feedback on implementations.


That is a great idea from Sitecore!

Connection Pooling

Some things after discovering look trivial and clear, but it takes time to find this simple reason. I found a lot of question in Internet, and almost no useful answers.

After SQL server restart you might get the error in your ASP.NET application: "A transport-level error has occurred when sending the request to the server. (provider: Shared Memory Provider, error: 0 - No process is on the other end of the pipe.) "

The reason is hiding in SQL Server Connection Pooling http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/8xx3tyca.aspx

You can do a simple test by adding ;Pooling=false to your connection string to Sitecore databases and now your application will not crash whenever SQL restarts.

Impact Connection Pooling on performance for a stand-alone Sitecore installation - is what I will try now to investigate.

Localization of RADControls in Sitecore

One can see that there are a few places in Sitecore CMS backend that are not localized. And that's because they fall out usual translation way.

In particular we are talking about RAD controls: Rich-Text Editor and SpellChecker.

Telerik supports own way of localization their controls via XML files, but this approach doesn't work in Sitecore out-of-the-box.

My investigation was primary aimed on finding the easy enablish RAD controls localization without coding. In particular according to code and Reflector setting the setting CacheLocalization in sitecore\shell\RadControls\Editor\ConfigFile.xml to 'true' should help. Especially since direct requiesting the page sitecore/shell/RadControls/Editor/localization.aspx?type=editor&language=da worked perfectly. Unfortunately playing with settings didn't help.

Thus the last approach was to set Telerik.WebControls.RadEditor.Language property via code.

I used great article from Alexey Romaniuha as an example.

As a result the workaround to enable localization in RAD Controls in Sitecore looks like:

1. Compile the code and put appropriate DLL into bin:


using System;
using Sitecore.Web;

namespace Sitecore.LocalizationEnabling
{
public class RADSpellWithLangSwitcher : Sitecore.Shell.Controls.RADEditor.RADEditor
{
new protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs args)
{
string lang = Sitecore.Context.Language.ToString();

if (lang == "en")
{
lang = "en-US";
}
this.Editor.Language = lang;

base.Page_Load(sender, args);

}
}
}


2. Replace in the sitecore\shell\Controls\Rich Text Editor\Default.aspx file

@ Page Language="c#" Inherits="Sitecore.Shell.Controls.RADEditor.RADEditor"

with

@ Page Language="c#" Inherits="Sitecore.LocalizationEnabling.RADSpellWithLangSwitcher"

3. Create a folder with language code under \sitecore\shell\RadControls\Editor\Localization\ folder.

I guess the approach for the SpellCheker is completely the same, just not publishing it here.

License Expiration Notifier – scheduled task

I’ve created a simple scheduled task – it check expiration date of the Sitecore license at the installation where it's run and sends warning (or writes to log file) in case expiration date comes in a certain number of days.Should prevent from unexpected license expiration and hence from site downtime.

In case nobody objects, it will appear at http://trac.sitecore.net soon.