Sitecore Experience Accelerator (SXA): Quick Responsive Mobile Nav

One of the most common components you see on websites nowadays is the responsive mobile nav.  Although my version won’t be as great-looking (not even a hamburger), this post shows you how to “quickly” add one with minimal code updates.  This means, it won’t be the most optimal solution.  Now that the disclaimer is out…

Sentiments and Tagging with Sitecore + Microsoft Cognitive Services

With all the hype with AI and Sitecore Cortex is on the horizon, I wanted to explore what’s available for us right now.  Using Habitat (on Sitecore 9), I updated the Page Content feature module so that it shows a sentiment score and tags right below the summary. The Solution Here are the steps I…

Sitecore DI, the Habitat Way

The sample Helix implementation, Habitat, extends Sitecore Dependency Injection by adding new extensions to register services easier and maintain the modular architecture highlighted in Helix. Although Sitecore only supports constructor injection, it still provides a very powerful mechanism to decouple your solution. To follow the Habitat-way, here are things to remember: All MVC controllers compiled in…

Add Placeholder Name when Inserting Sitecore Component (without updating Sitecore JS files)

With advanced front-end development, the code can sometimes be very complex such as when things are flying around, fading in and out, etc.  In Sitecore, this could easily mean that content editor using Experience Editor can be cumbersome particularly when looking for the correct placeholder to place a component.  Although in theory, an author should…

Tips on Using @Html.Sitecore().Fields’ parameters object (Updated: Oct 10 ’17)

It’s the most efficient and simplest way to show content on a View while making sure that the content is still editable using the Experience Editor.  You could easily use typical Sitecore API methods in your View to render complex content like a date, link, or image but the content may end up not being…

Step by Step: Sitecore Publishing Service

The Sitecore Publishing Service is a highly efficient replacement (optional) for the traditional publishing methods while providing a better authoring experience.  In addition, it’s the beginning of the ASP.NET Core adoption (sort of how MVC started) in Sitecore.  Either you publish a massive amount of items at a time and require better visualization or  just…

Sitecore Nuget and TFS Build

If you’re not using the Sitecore Nuget repository to reference your Sitecore assemblies, you’re doing too much work. You can find a list of the repositories at: https://sitecore.myget.org/gallery Of course, if you’ve used Nuget before, then you would know how to add these.  Otherwise, I’ll write about it on another post. The Issue An issue…

QueryStrings on Links Inside a Sitecore Rich-Text Field

Sometimes a Sitecore page requires a querystring such as a Login page that redirects back to the original page.  This is easy if you’re doing this on a Link field.  However, sometimes you need this on a Rich Text field.  This is where it becomes obscure since you only get the UI below: There’s not…

Remote Events in CDs Work for Only a Few Minutes

Have you gotten this issue before?  This is a very sporadic issue and may happen with one (1) or more CDs.  Sometimes it doesn’t even happen on all the CDs.  Basically, you want something to happen on the CD like updating the index or refreshing the cache (very common things to do).  This normally happens after a…

Robots.txt for a Multi-site Sitecore Instance

Sitecore Version: 8.1 Every Website that has some level of relative popularity needs to have a Robots.txt.  For Sitecore-based sites, you could easily put a robots.txt on the root of the site.  However, this solution doesn’t always work because of: a multi-tenant Sitecore instance may require different rules per site IT policies may not easily…

Who’s Online?

This is just a simple post.   Sometimes you just need to know who is logged in.  For instance, when you are syncing content from one environment to another, or if you want to make sure no one will be affected by a server refresh, etc. The only way to do this without coding is…

WFFM DateFormat has no Effect on Date Selector (not Picker) – MVC Only

When an author uses the Date field which results into three (3) drop-down boxes and specifies the DateFormat, the drop-boxes always display as Day, Month, and Year.  This only happens in MVC as the view is “hard-coded” (\Views\Form\EditorTemplates\DateField.cshtml).  In Web forms, this is fine as the drop-down are actually “outputted” in the code-behind. The MVC-ported…