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Sitecore

A collection of 20 posts

You want to publish when?!

You want to publish when?!

Publishing is a fundamental part of Sitecore and is the concept that I miss most when building websites on other platforms, but did you know that it can be set up to be automated? In the Sitecore configuration, you can find a Sitecore scheduled publishing agent, Sitecore.Tasks.PublishAgent, that

dimmy Home Delivery

dimmy Home Delivery

A few weeks ago, I released an open-source project called dimmy [https://public-abstract-gravy-power.ghost.io/2020/07/29/dimmy-docker-development-dumpling/] and blogged about some of the motivations behind why I started to build a tool. Today I will be sharing with you a walkthrough (warts and all) on how to start

Dimmy, the Docker Development Dumpling.

Dimmy, the Docker Development Dumpling.

It was back in 2015 when I first heard of docker, but it was not until 2017 at my first DDD conference where my mind was opened to its powers. I attended a presentation call "Docker FROM Scratch" presented by Aaron Powell [https://twitter.com/slace] and the way spun

Debug Sitecore like a boss

Debug like a boss

Debug Sitecore like a boss

Debug method One: Read the Log Files Even though sometimes what Sitecore logs out is crap it is still the best starting point, you will start to quickly get a sixth sense of what the most likely causes of issues are. There can be a lot of red herrings so

Dependency Injection for Sitecore Pipelines and Pipeline Groups.

Dependency Injection for Sitecore Pipelines and Pipeline Groups.

If you know me, you are aware of my love of Simple Injector, and if you don't know me, I love Simple Injector. I wanted to use it as the container that resolved a JSS layoutService processor, but the tried and true method of using ref and factory attributes blew

Help I cant personalise on the Referrer

Help I cant personalise on the Referrer

I love it when I get on the tools and start to dig my teeth into an issue. The latest project I have been on has given me opportunities to do this, as you might have noticed from the little wave of blogs over the last few weeks, and this

Cannot parse a valid IP address.

Cannot parse a valid IP address.

The last blog post [https://blog.gravypower.net/2019/02/27/the-certificate-was-not-found/] I wrote was around and issue with xConnect certs, but what led me to it was an investigation in to malfunctioning Goe-Location personalisation. This post is a continuation of that saga. I have started to create a module

The certificate was not found.

The certificate was not found.

I am currently working on a Sitecore project that uses rules to apply personalisation based on a GeoIP lookup using the MaxMind Lite Database, utilising the Rule Engine like this is one of the use cases that makes Sitecore so powerful, unfortunately, I was running into strange behaviour that was

DI container references vs system boundaries.

DI container references vs system boundaries.

In my post, Watch your Composition Root [https://public-abstract-gravy-power.ghost.io/2018/02/24/watch-your-composition-root/], I explore how to empower plugins to be apart of the application bootstrap process. After sharing this two friends of mine, Rob Earlam [https://twitter.com/RobEarlam] and Sean Holmesby [https://twitter.com/seanholmesby] supplied

Target .NET framework

Sitecore seven to nine in no time

Target .NET framework

As you can imagine a solution that has been around since Sitecore 7 has 'A LOT' of projects. My first plan was to visit each one and edit the target framework via the properties window, but after the first three projects of about 70, I thought to myself "This is

Sitecore seven to nine in no time

Indexes

IndexField could not be found Back in Sitecore 7, this attribute was found in the Sitecore.ContentSearch assembly, as of Sitecore 8 it was moved to Sitecore.ContentSearch.Linq, it is used to map an index field to a POCO property where the names are different, and the default provider

Web Forms For Marketers

Sitecore seven to nine in no time

Web Forms For Marketers

Sitecore 9 is the beginning of the end for WFFM, thank God. Unfortunately, I am not out of the woods with my upgrade task as a new version was released. A new forms solution called Sitecore Forms [https://doc.sitecore.net/sitecore_experience_platform/digital_marketing/sitecore_forms] looks very

Sitecore Client Customisation

Sitecore seven to nine in no time

Sitecore Client Customisation

WebEditCommand?! The WebEditCommand class once resided in the Sitecore.Client.dll, as of Sitecore 8.1 it has moved to Sitecore.ExperienceEditor.dll. Issues: The type or namespace name 'WebEditCommand' could not be found (are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference?) 'xxx.Execute(CommandContext)': no suitable

Sitecore seven to nine in no time

ECM

After working through upgrade issues related to ECM, the number of errors was overwhelming and intent of the customisations unclear, I concluded that pursuing a straight upgrade was not worth the effort involved. If you have many customisations to ECM as this solution did, it might be worth your time

Analytics, move over DMS and xDB?!

Sitecore seven to nine in no time

Analytics, move over DMS and xDB?!

In Sitecore 7.5 xDB was introduced, this brought new ways of thinking about visitors to your website and tracking their journeys, but it was one big breaking change for solutions that had bespoke analytics code. The unfortunate thing here is more often than not this shift in thinking about

Service Locator Pattern or Anti-Pattern?

Service Locator Pattern or Anti-Pattern?

For a long time now I have considered the Service Locator an Anti-Pattern, but recently I have come to question this resolve, is it black and white? Maybe not. Mark Seemann first introduced me to the idea of an Anti-Pattern in general with his article Service Locator is an Anti-Pattern

Two containers are better than one.

Two containers are better than one.

Sitecore is a fantastic CMS that does many things right, and from version 8.2 the list also included Dependency Injection. It's great to see the product embrace IoC, the framework's code is using it, training materials include the concept, and the Sitecore community is talking about it. I love

Plugins, why should I care?

Software Craftsmanship

Plugins, why should I care?

In my last post, Watch your Composition Root [https://public-abstract-gravy-power.ghost.io/2018/02/24/watch-your-composition-root/], while exploring how I keep my bootstrapping code nice and tidy, I point out that the approach workes very well when implementing the plugin pattern. Rob Earlam provided me with some feedback that I

Unit Tetsing and Sitecore

Unit Tetsing and Sitecore

I am a big advocate of TDD and would love to see interfaces on all of the Sitecore types. This is a big ask to put to the product team as they have new and wonderful features to work on. There are a few methods that help you Test Drive

Dependency Injection

Gravyframe

For the last few months I have been working on a boilerplate and example of how I think a website should be built on top of a .NET CMS. The basic idea is to abstract away the underlining CMS treating it as a detail not part of the core solution.