Sitecore’s SearchHits.Slice(int) method seems to change in Sitecore 6.6

2015-10-022015-09-30 Andy Burnslucene, SearchLeave a comment

I am working on a Sitecore 6.6 upgrade (yes, I know that that is still pretty much obsolete) and I came across a weird bug that took an age to track down. This is more a reminder for myself than anything else.

The code for Lucene searches frequently used lines of the form:

List<SearchHit> distinctHits = hits.Slice(0).Distinct(new SearchHitEqualityComparer()).ToList();

This always returned zero SearchHits. It seems that this is due to the call to ‘Slice(0)‘ bit. This does raise some questions… Continue reading “Sitecore’s SearchHits.Slice(int) method seems to change in Sitecore 6.6” →

Enable SSL for sending emails on Sitecore

2015-09-182015-09-15 Andy BurnsEmail, SSL, TLS, WebFormsForMarketersLeave a comment

I was asked to use a GMail server to send emails from Sitecore with. This is actually a pretty reasonable request – but GMail only supports connections over TLS or SSL. Configuring Web Forms for Marketers to use this was proving … interesting, until I found this excellent article by Mark Cassidy. Continue reading “Enable SSL for sending emails on Sitecore” →

Annoying Sitecore Email Settings

2015-09-172015-09-15 Andy BurnsEmail, Patch, SitecoreConfig, UserControl, WebFormsForMarketers1 Comment

It would appear that Sitecore’s mail settings are, mostly, in a handful of settings in web.config. At one level, they are, and a simple patch file can be used to set them for your system. For example… Continue reading “Annoying Sitecore Email Settings” →

Neat idea for showing Sitecore Sublayouts

2015-09-162015-09-18 Andy Burnsboilerplate, sublayouts, UserControlLeave a comment

Sometimes simple things make life easier. Here’s a good tip from Brian Pederson on locating sublayouts on your webpage. The short of it – in your layout page, insert the path to your sublayouts. Continue reading “Neat idea for showing Sitecore Sublayouts” →

Testing SQL Connections

2015-09-112015-09-08 Andy BurnsSQL1 Comment

Trying to test SQL connections from servers that don’t have any SQL tools on them can be a little … awkward. Well, here’s a great tip from Doug Rathbone – Testing connectivity to Microsoft SQL Server without any tools installed.

Too long? Create a .UDL file, and use its property window.

Genius, and simple.

Awkward SharePoint Link field text

2015-09-082015-09-08 Andy BurnsCQWP, XSLLeave a comment

I had a gnarly support call today. One of our customers was using Announcement lists to display news on the homepage of their intranet, and they’ve a thumbnail image they’d set for each item. Then, on the home page, they’ve got a Content Query Web Part using some custom XSL to render those announcements.

However, the Content Query Web Part would only show some of the thumbnail images. Capture

TL;DR – Saving an image field on a ‘New’ form without a descripion saves a different format to after an ‘Edit’, which sets a default even if you don’t change the image field value.

Continue reading “Awkward SharePoint Link field text” →

Make Sitecore record the class writing to the logs

2015-09-072015-09-16 Andy BurnsCallerMemberAttribute, Diagnotics, Logging, ReflectionLeave a comment

I’m a big fan of writing into your logs the class and method that is currently executing – it makes fault finding so much easier. Typically I’d do this with reflection – but it turns out that you can do this with a small change to Sitecore’s configuration. Continue reading “Make Sitecore record the class writing to the logs” →

Appending to the _content field in Sitecore Search 7.2 and 7.5

2015-09-03 Andy Burnscontent field, lucene, Search, _content2 Comments

The _content field in Lucene for Sitecore is basically the full text index. If you index things like PDFs, Word documents, etc., then the results of the IFilter get stored in the _content field.

You can add computed fields into the _content field simply by specifying them with the name ‘_content’. However, I found some differences with how patch files behave. Continue reading “Appending to the _content field in Sitecore Search 7.2 and 7.5” →

Fixing Sitecore Shell Dialogs

2015-08-25 Andy BurnsLeave a comment

Just a quick note – I’ve come across a few systems where the dialogs in Sitecore shell are … well, a mess. For example, the wrong size, 2 vertical scrollbars, etc..

This step in the 7.0 to 7.1 upgrade process seems to fix some of those issues. Continue reading “Fixing Sitecore Shell Dialogs” →

Awkward Sitemap XML module

2015-07-222015-09-11 Andy Burnssitemaps1 Comment

So, I was reviewing a few Sitecore log files for a customer of ours, and I kept coming across the following entries.

ManagedPoolThread #15 10:26:56 WARN The serachengine "Http://google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/ping?sitemap=sitemap.xml" returns an 404 error ManagedPoolThread #15 10:26:57 WARN The serachengine "http://search.yahooapis.com/SiteExplorerService/V1/ping?sitemap=sitemap.xml" returns an 404 error

This struck me as interesting. These are calls to different search providers to tell them that your site’s sitemap file has been updated, and should be read again (so that new content could be indexed). This is all from a nice little module on Sitecore Marketplace. We use it quite a lot. However, I spotted a few issues… Continue reading “Awkward Sitemap XML module” →

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