WND CourseManual_v7.2.0.1x Course Manual V7.2.0.1

User Manual:

Open the PDF directly: View PDF .
Page Count: 261

Download
Open PDF In Browser	View PDF

Sitecore Training
Sitecore® Experience Platform™ 7.2
Course Manual
Website Development for .NET Developers

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Welcome
Thank you for attending this 4 day course which teaches participants how to work as an effective .NET Developer
on a Sitecore project.
This course is intended for .NET web developers with advanced C# skills who are new to the Sitecore API and
wish to develop websites using Sitecore Recommended Practices.

Foreword
The original goal of this course was not only to teach developers the fundamentals of building a Sitecore site, but
also to do so in accordance with recommended practices. We wanted to give developers the tools to support both
visitor and business user needs, by building solutions that take full advantage of the platform’s features and can
scale to meet the demands of the business. In this release, we have streamlined the fundamentals and
reemphasized the importance of understanding what the framework has to offer, and how to get the most out
Sitecore as an Experience Platform.
Martina Welander, September 2014, Bristol UK

Martina Helene Welander is a Technical Consulting
Engineer at Sitecore and (strangely) a Historical
Studies graduate from Bristol University. At Sitecore,
she has worked tirelessly to create and complete
dozens of projects that have helped define the way
users see Sitecore and ultimately, how our clients see
their own businesses and marketing strategies.

Martina Welander
Led Development Project

Martina is a technical chameleon, with vast and varied
knowledge of Sitecore, C#, front‐end development,
and user experience. She blogs for Sitecore at
http://www.sitecore.net/Learn/Blogs/Technical‐
Blogs/Martina‐Welander‐Sitecore‐Blog.aspx, and
initiated a Twitter account for Sitecore Education
Services at https://twitter.com/mastersitecore.
Martina also updates her own Twitter feed with her
trademark humour at
https://twitter.com/mhwelander.
In her spare time, Martina slays zombies in Minecraft,
makes timely use of Ætherize in Magic the Gathering,
bakes, runs, and plays play‐by‐post RPGs.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Michelle White is a Technical Architect and Instructor
who joined the Sitecore USA team in early 2012. She
enjoys sharing Sitecore knowledge with many
different audience groups. Michelle’s experiences as
an IT consultant, and a passionate instructor since the
early 90’s, extend across multiple platforms and
applications, including Microsoft, resulting in multiple
areas of expertise, MCTs, and Master Microsoft
Instructor achievements.
Michelle enjoys ridding Middle Earth (LOTRO) of orcs,
football, gardening, reading, and is an accomplished
artist.
Michelle White
Provided Domain Expertise
Greatly Influenced Course Restructuring

Sen Gupta has been innovating at Sitecore since 2011.
A certified Microsoft trainer, he has been developing
software and training on Microsoft technologies for
10+ years. Despite Sen’s sincere belief that WND truly
enables developers with all that it offers today, his
obsession to continually improve it will not rest. When
he is not working hard for Sitecore Sen loves to cook
and race his latest prized possession a KTM Duke 390.

Sen Gupta
Provided Domain Expertise
Greatly Influenced Course Restructuring

Atousa comes from a creative background and has
years of hands on experience with Content
Management Systems. Her favourite hobbies include
reading, cooking and keeping fit by running about
after her three beloved pets.

Atousa Memarpouri
Provided Creative Direction
Drove Overall Look and Feel

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Dan Zhang is a techie with a passion for enabling
others. Dan has over five years of experience as a web
developer, with a number of specialities including
HTML, SQL, Javascript, C# etc. She is also an
accomplished academic with a Bachelor’s degree in
Software Engineering, and a Master’s degree in IT
with Security from University of Bristol.
She loves travel, design and painting in her spare
time.

Dan Zhang
Built Course Application

Wendy has over 10 years of experience in the field,
including 8 years developing computer based training
for military contracts. She is driven by a passion for
good design, technology and the future of learning
technologies.

Wendy Lawn
Tested Labs

For the last 15 years, Susan Marenco has worked as a
writer and editor for Microsoft Development Centre
Copenhagen, Egmont Publishing, UNICEF and many
other companies.

Susan Marenco
Copy Edited Course
Supported Formatting Efforts
Provided Final Polish

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Course Participants Prerequisites
In addition to IT professional skills, learners should also have experience in:






Sitecore user tools comprising Content Editor, Page Editor and Desktop and Sitecore user tasks
including Publishing and Workflows (Sitecore Foundations Pre‐Learning Video).
Programming using .Net WebForms and C#.
Working with Microsoft Visual Studio 2012 or higher.
Working and interacting with Microsoft SQL Server.

Sitecore Certified Instructors
Your instructor is a Sitecore technical and instructional expert who has met rigorous standards to be able to
deliver your course.

Sitecore Certification
Sitecore certification is a valuable credential that demonstrates your skills in the Sitecore technology. To earn
certification you must complete and pass the exam at the end of your training. You will need to register on our
https://sdn.sitecore.net, the Sitecore SDN portal, to complete the assessment.

Post Course Assessment
Sitecore values your opinion so we would appreciate it if you would fill in an assessment questionnaire at the end
of your training.

Icons used in this manual
Important
Important information or warnings. Read carefully.

Recommended / Best Practices
Recommended practice notice. Adhere whenever possible

Tip / Note
A key feature that is highlighted.

Demo / Walkthrough
Provide links and references to further material relating to exercise in the module.

Apply
Provide exercises relating to the material in the module.

Knowledge Check
Master the covered concepts and terminology.
Copyright Notice:
Information in this document is subject to change without notice. All example companies, products, domain names, email addresses, logos and people are
fictitious. No part of this document may be copied or transmitted electronically with the prior approval of Sitecore. Sitecore has no responsibility for any links to
external web sites provided in this document.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Contents
Sitecore Overview .......................................................... 8
Course Overview ........................................................................................................... 9
What Is Sitecore? ........................................................................................................ 11
Sitecore from an Author’s Perspective ........................................................................ 15
Sitecore from a Developer’s Perspective ..................................................................... 20

Defining Data ............................................................... 23
Creating Data Templates ............................................................................................ 24
Data Template Inheritance ......................................................................................... 30
Standard Values .......................................................................................................... 39
Insert Options ............................................................................................................. 44
Summary and Optional Lab ........................................................................................ 46

Presentation ................................................................ 48
Presentation Is Dynamic and Modular ......................................................................... 49
Preparing to Build ....................................................................................................... 51
Creating a Layout........................................................................................................ 57
Creating Components ................................................................................................. 63
Dynamic Binding ......................................................................................................... 67
Outputting Content .................................................................................................... 74
Summary and Optional Lab ........................................................................................ 76

Sitecore API ................................................................. 78
Basic API Concepts and Retrieving Items .................................................................... 79
Item Links ................................................................................................................... 85
Creating, Modifying, and Deleting Items ..................................................................... 89
Working with Complex Fields ...................................................................................... 97

Advanced Presentation Concepts ................................ 105
Reusable Content...................................................................................................... 106
Layout Deltas............................................................................................................ 115

Real World Solutions ................................................... 117
Familiar Concepts ..................................................................................................... 118
Dealing with Larger Sites .......................................................................................... 130
Sitecore Query .......................................................................................................... 133

Configuring the Page Editor ......................................... 137
Datasource Restrictions ............................................................................................ 138
Parameters and Parameter Templates ...................................................................... 141
Placeholder Restrictions............................................................................................ 144
Advanced Page Editor Configuration ........................................................................ 147

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Dealing with Your Data ................................................ 153
Item Buckets ............................................................................................................. 154
Search....................................................................................................................... 161

Recommended Practices .............................................. 173
Working with Media .................................................................................................. 174
Caching and Performance ......................................................................................... 176
Publishing ................................................................................................................. 181
Installing and Scaling Sitecore................................................................................... 185
Team Development and the Development Environment........................................... 189
How to Deal with Deployment .................................................................................. 195
Basic Security............................................................................................................ 197
Workflow .................................................................................................................. 199

Marketing Functionality .............................................. 202
Introduction to the Customer Experience Platform (XP) ............................................ 203
Engagement Value and Goals ................................................................................... 205
Profiling and Personalization .................................................................................... 211

Optional Topics .......................................................... 214
Branch Templates ..................................................................................................... 215
Other Item and Template Properties......................................................................... 217
Pipelines and Events ................................................................................................. 227
Rules ......................................................................................................................... 231
Placeholder Overrides ............................................................................................... 233

Review ...................................................................... 239

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Sitecore Overview
Contents:






Course Overview
What Is Sitecore?
Sitecore from an Author’s Perspective
Sitecore from a Developer’s Perspective

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Course Overview
Introduction
Objectives
By the end of this topic you will be able to:

Describe the objectives of this course.

Content
Objectives for This Course

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Module Overviews
Module 1

Sitecore Overview

Module 2 Defining Data

Course overview

Creating data templates

What is Sitecore?

Data template inheritance

Sitecore from an author’s perspective
Sitecore from a developer’s perspective

Standard values
Insert options
Summary and optional lab

Module 3 Presentation

Module 4 Sitecore API

Presentation is dynamic and modular

Basic API concepts & retrieving items

Setting up a Visual Studio Project

Creating a layout

Creating components

Creating, deleting, and modifying items

Dynamic binding

Rendering content

Working with complex fields

Module 5 Advanced Presentation
Concepts

Module 6 Real World Solutions

Reusable content

Dealing with larger sites

Module 7 Configuring the Page Editor

Module 8 Dealing With Your Data

Datasource restrictions

Parameters and parameter templates

Familiar concepts

Placeholder settings
Advanced Page Editor configuration

Module 9 Recommended Practices

Module 10 Marketing Functionality

Working with media

Caching & performance

Installing & scaling

Engagement values & goals

Team development

Dealing with deployment

Profiling & personalization

Module 11 Optional Topics

Exam and Certification

Branch templates

Theory exam with 40 questions

Other item and template properties
Pipelines and events
Rules
Placeholder overrides

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

What Is Sitecore?
Introduction
Objectives
By the end of this topic you will be able to:






List key features of Sitecore Customer Experience Platform (XP).
Describe a typical scenario for a visitor.
Find the information that you need.
Contact support.

Content
Sitecore Is a Customer Experience Platform

Cross‐Channel Communication

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

A Typical Scenario

The Developer’s Role

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

What's in it for you?

Where Can I Find More Information?

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

How Do I Contact Support?

Task – Sign Up for the SDN



© Sitecore 2014

Browse to http://sdn.sitecore.net/.
Register, making sure that your name is written as you want it to appear on the course
certificate.

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Sitecore from an Author’s Perspective
Introduction
Objectives
By the end of this topic you will be able to:






Name three interfaces that Sitecore business users have access to.
Determine which interface is suitable for which task.
Explain how Sitecore data is represented to authors.
Name the process by which content is pushed to a live environment.

Content
Sitecore as a Content Management System (CMS) and Marketing Platform

Demo – Sitecore Interfaces
In the following demo, we will:

Log into the various Sitecore interfaces.

Open the training site in a browser and append /sitecore to the URL (for example,
http://BasicSitecore/sitecore).
Log in as the administrator (password: b).

Note
There are three interfaces used for editing: Page Editor, Content Editor and Desktop.
3.
4.

Double‐click the Page Editor icon to log into that interface.
Expand the ribbon using the arrow in the top right‐hand corner.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum
5.

Website Development for.Net Developer

Explore some of the tabs:
Home – for common add/delete/move tasks
Experience – for changing languages
Click the View tab. Notice that both the Enable and Show checkboxes are not selected.
Select the Navigation bar checkbox.

Note
The navigation bar is appended to the ribbon. This allows authors to navigate through the site structure
by selecting the appropriate item and clicking Go.

Navigate to the /home/which‐bike item.

Demo – Editing in Page Editor
In the following demo, we will:

Use the Page Editor to edit content inline.

On the View tab, select the Editing checkbox and hover over the various areas of the page such as an
image, some text and so on. The Edit Frame toolbar appears. The editing options available on the
toolbar depend upon the type of content (image or text) that you have selected.

Click the Which bike? title and change it to Which bike should I choose?
Click the top‐left corner to save the edited title.
On the Home tab, click Insert and select a new Standard Content template.
Give the template the name Bikes for beginners. You have now created a new page.

Note
The breadcrumbs automatically know what to display.
6.

Navigate back to the Which bike? Item. The page that you just inserted has been automatically added to
the listing.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Demo – Designing in Page Editor
In the following demo, we will:

Use the Page Editor to design a page.

Click the View tab.
Clear the Editing checkbox and select the Designing checkbox instead.
Click various components on the Which Bike page.

Note
You can no longer edit content, but you can now select areas of functionality on the page. You still get an
edit frame, but the options are commands like Move or Delete.
4.
5.
6.

On the Home tab, click Add Component (or the corresponding icon next to the tab). A number of Add
to here buttons appear where you can insert a component.
Click the button at the top of the left‐hand column and select the Subnavigation component and then
click Select.
If the list on this page is long, you might want to present a quick overview by adding a side navigation
component. To do that, click Add to here at the top of the left‐hand column and choose a Side
Navigation component.
Verify that a component that lists all the page titles, including the one that you just created, appears on
the page.

Demo – Desktop and Content Editor
In the following demo, we will:


1.
2.
3.
4.

Use Content Editor to edit and publish content.

Click the Log off button and go back to the /sitecore interfaces menu.
Click Options.
Log in as the administrator and double‐click the Desktop icon.
Click the Sitecore button and open the Content Editor.

Note
There are a variety of interfaces that can be accessed via the Desktop icon.
5.
6.

Type Which bike in the search bar above the Sitecore tree. The item that was edited earlier is displayed in
the result set.
Open the item. It is made up of several different types of fields.

Note
The Heading field now reads Which bike should I choose? because it was changed using the Page Editor
interface.
7.

Change the Heading field to Choices of bike and then, on the ribbon, click Publish > Preview to see the
changes.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

If you are happy with the changes, click the arrow next to Publish > Publish site, and select the
Incremental Publish option to publish the changed items.

Log off and view the Which bike? page as a regular visitor. Because we have published the changes, the
items have been pushed from the sandbox environment to the web environment.

You can access the Login screen by navigating to the Home page with /sitecore appended to the site’s URL. Click
the Options button to choose one of three editor environments:
The Page Editor displays individual pages with an editing ribbon that allows business users to
either edit content inline (changing text or adding media like images) or modify the page layout
(adding or removing areas on the page).

The Content Editor allows a business user to work directly with the all the data stored in
Sitecore. Unlike in the Page Editor, authors in this editor environment are editing the actual
data excluding any presentation.

The Sitecore Desktop uses the familiar “Windows” metaphor with a Start button and menu to
access all Sitecore interfaces, including the Page Editor and Content Editor. The actual tools
authors see depend on their security context; administrators see everything.

Items and the Content Tree

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Publishing and the Sitecore Databases

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Sitecore from a Developer’s Perspective
Introduction
Objectives
By the end of this topic you will be able to:






Explain what gets installed on your computer when you install Sitecore.
Name three Sitecore databases.
Name four foundation features that Sitecore provides out‐of‐the‐box.
Draw out the minimum requirements for a production environment.

Content
Architecture and Requirements

Separation of Concerns

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

How Sitecore Handles a Request

What Gets Installed?

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Installation Scenarios ‐ Recommended Minimum

A Realistic Example

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Defining Data
Contents







© Sitecore 2014

Creating Data Templates
Data Template Inheritance
Standard Values
Insert Options
Summary and Optional Lab

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Creating Data Templates
Introduction
Objectives
By the end of this topic you will be able to:

Create a data template using Sitecore Rocks.

Content
Items, Fields, and Data Templates

Field Type Determines…

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Who Decides What the Data Structure Will Be?

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Are Fields Shared?

We Use Sitecore Rocks

Tip
For more information about Sitecore Rocks, see:
http://www.sitecore.net/Learn/Blogs/Technical‐Blogs/Trevor‐Campbell/Posts/2013/02/28‐Days‐of‐
Sitecore‐Rocks‐Intro.aspx

Demo – Creating a Data Template
In this demo, we will:

Create a new data template named Base.
Add three fields to the template: Heading, Main Image, and Main Content.

Note: You will perform these tasks in the upcoming labs.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Apply – Topic 2.1
Creating a Base Data Template
You can find a blank installation of Sitecore on your student computer. Your instructor will give you the
URL. Throughout this manual, the hostname for the blank Sitecore instance will be referred to as
http://basicsitecore/. If your hostname is different, then please adjust the URLs accordingly.

Create a Data Template Named Base

Overview Steps
Optional detailed steps are available below to help you.
Using Sitecore Rocks, connect to the BasicSitecore instance, create a data template called Base under
master/sitecore/Templates/User Defined.
Create field sections and fields as described in the following table:
Field section
Basic Information
Field name

Single‐line text

Detailed Steps
If you completed the lab using the Overview Steps above, you do not need to follow these steps.
1.

Open Visual Studio.

To open Sitecore Explorer, select Sitecore>Sitecore Explorer in the Visual Studio toolbar.

Locate your instance in the Sitecore Explorer window under Connections > . The
instance name is BasicSitecore unless your instructor tells you otherwise.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Right‐click BasicSitecore and select Scope to This.

Expand in the BasicSitecore by clicking the arrow to the left of the server icon.

Expand the master database.

Continue to expand items until you can see the User Defined folder under:
/BasicSitecore/master/sitecore/templates/User Defined.

Right‐click User Defined and select New Template…

Keyboard Shortcut
CTRL + Shift + Space = Commandy
Commandy is similar to “Navigate To…” function in Visual Studio; it’s a utility for finding functions in
Sitecore Rocks. Select an item and use the command to bring up a searchable list of available tasks.
9.

Name the data template Base.

10. Create field sections and fields as described in the following table:
Field section
Basic Information
Field name

Single‐line text

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Your final screen should look like this:

11. Click Save.

© Sitecore 2014

Data Definition Reference
http://sdn.sitecore.net/Reference/Sitecore%207/Data%20Definition%20Reference.aspx
Content Author’s Cookbook
http://sdn.sitecore.net/Reference/Sitecore%207/Content%20Authors%20Cookbook.aspx

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Data Template Inheritance
Introduction
Objectives
By the end of this topic you will be able to:

Specify the base templates a data template inherits from.
Describe the benefits of data template inheritance.
Name the data template that all data templates inherit from.

Content
RECAP: Challenges with Field Duplication

Data Template Inheritance

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Tip
A data template can inherit from any number of base templates.
You can use a data template multiple times in the inheritance chain (for example, if Base and Holiday both
inherit from Standard Values, the fields will not appear twice).

Best Practice
Although you can use a data template multiple times in the inheritance chain, you should avoid creating
a circular template inheritance (A  B  A).
Similarly, field names must be unique. You cannot define Title field in both Base and Holiday templates
and expect to be able to target them as separate fields in the latter’s superset of fields. They do not
merge like template sections do.
Never inherit a field that an item is not going to use (for example, if an author can populate a field that is
never rendered or used, consider revising your inheritance chain).
Overusing data template inheritance can quickly become difficult to manage beyond 3 or 4 levels.

Resulting Data Templates

Important
Data template inheritance should be considered at the start of your project. Moving fields into a base
template after items have been created using that data template will result in a loss of data.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Demo – Setting Up and Viewing Data Template Inheritance
In this demo we will be:
 Creating a Holidays Section data template.
 Choosing an icon for the Holidays Section data template.
 Configuring the Holidays Section data template to inherit from Base.
 Creating a Family Holidays item based on the Holidays Section data template.
 Create a Trip Details data template and configure it to inherit from Base
 Creating a Cycle the Cotswolds item based on the Trip Detail data template under the
Family Holidays item.
 Viewing the list of data templates that the Cycle the Cotswolds item inherits.
Note: You will perform this task in the upcoming lab.

Best Practice
Encapsulate all fields required for a specific feature in a data template, which other templates can then
inherit from. For example:

Page Meta Data [Title, Description, Keywords]
or
Banner [Banner Image, Banner Text]

Tip
By enabling standard fields in the View group in the Content Editor, you can see all the additional fields
derived from the Standard Template. Right‐click in the Editor Pane in Sitecore Rocks to see the
standard fields as well.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Apply – Topic 2.2
Data Template Inheritance
In the following labs, you will use Sitecore Rocks to:

Create Holidays Section and Trip
Details data templates.
Configure both data templates to
inherit from Base.
Create a site tree using the Holidays
Section and Trip Detail data
templates.

Holidays
Section

Figure 2‐1 Data template inheritance structure

Create One Data Template Named Holidays Section and Another Named Trip Detail

Overview Steps
Optional detailed steps are available below to help you.
Using Sitecore Rocks, create a data template named Holidays Section under :/sitecore/Templates/User
Defined and assign a star icon to it. This data template does not require any additional fields.
Create a second data template named Trip Details under /sitecore/Templates/User Defined and assign a
globe icon to it. Create field sections and field as described in the following table:
Field section
Trip Information
Field name

Price per person

Single‐line text

At the end of this lab, you should have three data templates under the User Defined folder:

Detailed Steps
If you completed the lab using the Overview Steps above, you do not need to follow these steps.
1.

In Visual Studio, open the Sitecore Explorer toolbar.

Expand the BasicSitecore solution until you can see: /BasicSitecore/master/sitecore/Templates/User
Defined.

Right‐click the User Defined folder and select New Template… to create a new template.

Name the template Holidays Section.

Double‐click the Holidays Section template to open it. Click the icon in the top left‐hand corner to open
the icon selection dialog.

Click the Search tab and search for “star”.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Select the yellow star icon and click OK.

Save. Your data template will look like this:

Right‐click the User Defined folder and select New Template… to create a new template.

10. Name the template Trip Details.
11. Change the Trip Details data template’s icon to an earth icon.
12. Create field sections and fields as described by the following table:
Field section
Trip Information
Field name

Price per person

Single‐line text

13. Save. Your data template will look like this:

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Configure Holidays Section and Trip Details to Inherit from Base

Overview Steps
Optional detailed steps are available below to help you.
Using Sitecore Rocks, open the Holidays Section data template and right‐click inside the grey space.
Select Set Base Templates and select Base. Repeat the process for Trip Details.

Detailed Steps
If you completed the lab using the Overview Steps above, you do not need to follow these steps.
1.

Ensure that you are in the Sitecore Explorer toolbar in Visual Studio. Locate the Holidays Section data
template under: /BasicSitecore/master/Templates/User Defined/Holidays Section.

Double‐click the Holidays Section item to open it.

Right‐click inside the grey space and select Set Base Templates:

Type base in the Search field and select the Base checkbox:

Click OK and Save.

Repeat the same process for the Trip Details data template. This data template should also inherit from
Base.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Create Content Items Using the Holiday Listing and Trip Details Data Templates

Overview Steps
Optional detailed steps are available below to help you.
Using Sitecore Rocks, right‐click on the Home item under: /BasicSitecore/master/sitecore/Content and
create a new item based on the Holidays Section item. Name it Family Holidays. Populate it with the
following sample content, or write your own:
Family Holidays
Basic Information
Heading

Holidays for the Entire Family

Take the kids on a cycling adventure this summer!

Any from the media library

As a child of the Family Holidays item, create a new item based on the Trip Details data template. Name
this item Explore Holland. Use the following sample content or write your own:
Explore Holland
Basic Information
Heading

Explore Holland

Explore Holland

Any from the media library

Trip Information
Price per person

$600 (or use any value)

4/24/2013 (or enter any date)

You will end up with a content tree that looks like this:

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Detailed Steps
If you completed the lab using the Overview Steps above, you do not need to follow these steps.
1.

In Visual Studio, open the Sitecore Explorer.

Locate the Home item under /BasicSitecore/master/sitecore/Content/Home.

Right‐click on the Home item and select Add>New Item…

Search for Holidays Section in the Add New Item dialog. Make sure that All is selected in the list to the
left:

Name the item Family Holidays and click OK.

Populate the item with the following sample content, or write your own:

Family Holidays
Basic Information
Heading

Holidays for the Entire Family

Take the kids on a cycling adventure this summer!

Any from the media library

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

To insert an image, drag and drop an image file from the file system or the Sitecore Media Library onto
the image placeholder icon under the Main Image field. There are sample images available in the
Student Resources Folder on the file system under: Student Resources Folder > WND Labs > Images.

Right‐click the Family Holidays item and insert a new child item based on the Trip Details data
template. Name this item Explore Holland.

Populate the item with the following content, or write your own:

Explore Holland
Basic Information
Heading

Explore Holland

Explore Holland

Any from the media library

Holiday Information
Price per person

$600 (or use any value)

4/24/2013 (or enter any date)

Tip
To view a list of data templates that an item or data template inherits from, right‐click the item and
select Navigate>Template Hierarchy. Two icons allow you to see inherited and inheriting data
templates. The following image shows which data templates the Family Holidays item is inherited from:

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Standard Values
Introduction
Objectives
By the end of this topic you will be able to:







Create an item’s standard values using Sitecore Rocks.
Use standard values to set the default content of a data template.
User tokens to insert dynamic field values.
Reset an item’s field values back to the standard values of its data template.
List the properties of an item that are set on its standard values as recommended practice.

Content
Standard Values Allow You to Set Up Defaults

Standard Values and Inheritance

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Name of the item

ID of the parent of the item

Name of the parent of the item

Current date (ISO format)

Current time (ISO format)

Current date and time (ISO format)

Important
These tokens are only expanded when you are creating an item. This means that if you add a $name
token to a field in template’s standard values, items that have already been created will literally have
$name in that field.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Item Naming Conventions

Note – URL Duplication
Sitecore will warn you about duplicate item names on the same level, but it will not stop you
from creating them. The solutions are to either create a pipeline to rename the item at item
creation time, or create a validation rule to intercept and deny saving the item.

Demo – Standard Values, Tokens, and Default Field Values
In this demo, we will:







Create standard values for the Base data template.
Add a $name token to the Heading field.
Add Lorem ipsum content to the Main Content field.
Create a new item based on the Trip Details data template.
Change Main Content and reset to standard values.
You will be performing these tasks in the upcoming lab.

Tip
To reset an item’s field to the value in standard values, right‐click the field name and select Reset to
Standard Value on Save, then save changes.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Apply – Topic 2.3
Create and Use Standard Values
Create Standard Values and Populate with Tokens and Sample Content

Overview Steps
Optional detailed steps are available below to help you.
Using Sitecore Rocks, create the Standard Values for the Base data template.
Add a $name token to the Heading field, and sample content, Lorem Ipsum to the Main Content field.

Detailed Steps
If you completed the lab using the Overview Steps above, you do not need to follow these steps.
1.

In Visual Studio, open the Sitecore Explorer.

Locate the Base data template under:/BasicSitecore/master/sitecore/Templates/User Defined Base.

Double‐click the data template to open it.

Right‐click inside the grey space in the right‐hand panel and select Create Standard Values. This will
create a __Standard Values item as a child of Base. Right‐click Base and click Refresh to see it.

Ensure that the newly created __Standard Values item is selected.

Type $name into the Heading field.

Right‐click the Main Content field and select Add ‘Lorem Ipsum…’, or type your own sample content.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Create a New Trip Details Item

Overview Steps
Optional detailed steps are available below to help you.
Using Sitecore Rocks, create a new Trip Details item under: /Home/Family Holidays. Name it Discover
the Cotswolds.
Note that the Heading field is replaced by the item’s name, and the Main Content field contains
sample content, “Lorem ipsum…”. Populate the remaining fields with sample content for the following
table, or write your own.
Discover the Cotswolds
Basic Information
Main Image

Any from the media library

Trip Information
Price per person

$800 (or use any value)

5/1/2013 (or enter any date)

Detailed Steps
If you completed the lab using the Overview Steps above, you do not need to follow these steps.
1.

In Visual Studio, open the Sitecore Explorer.

Locate the Family Holidays item under: /BasicSitecore/master/sitecore/Content/Home/Family Holidays.

Right‐click the Family Holidays item and select Add>New Item…

Insert a new item based on the Trip Details data template. Name this item Discover the Cotswolds.
Because we have set up default values and tokens, your item will be pre‐populated with content:

Populate the remaining fields with sample content from the following table, or write your own:

Discover the Cotswolds
Basic Information
Main Image

Any from the media library

Trip Information
Price per person

$800 (or use any value)

5/1/2013 (or enter any date)

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Insert Options
Introduction
Objectives
By the end of this topic you will be able to:

Assign insert options to a data template.
Explain why recommended practice is to assign insert options to standard values.
Explain why authors require insert options.

Content
What Are Insert Options?

Demo – Assign Insert Options
In this demo, we will:

Assign insert options to the Holidays Section data template.
Create a new Trip Details item under the Family Holidays item.

Note: You will be performing these tasks in the upcoming lab.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Apply – Topic 2.4
Assign Insert Options
Add Trip Details as an Insert Option on the Holidays Section Data Template

Overview Steps
Optional detailed steps are available below to help you.
Using Sitecore Rocks, add Trip Details as an insert option to the Holidays Section data template.
Remember to assign insert options on the data template’s standard values. Test that the data template
now appears as an insert option

Detailed Steps
If you completed the lab using the Overview Steps above, you do not need to follow these steps.
1.

In Visual Studio, open the Sitecore Explorer.

Locate the Holidays Section data template under: /BasicSitecore/master/sitecore/Templates/User
Defined/Holidays Section.

Double‐click the data template to open it.

Right‐click in the grey space inside the left‐hand panel and select Create Standard Values.

Right‐click the Holidays Section item in the tree and click Refresh. The standard values item will appear
as a child of the data template:

Right‐click the __Standard Values item. Select Tasks>Set Insert Options.

Search for Trip Details and select the Trip Details checkbox:

Click OK and Save.

To test that Trip Details now appear as an insert option on the Holiday Section data template, right‐
click on the Family Holidays item and ensure that Trip Details appears.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Summary and Optional Lab
Introduction
Objectives
This topic covers:






A summary of key vocabulary
A summary of standard values versus data templates
A summary of key steps
An optional lab

Content
Key Vocabulary

Data Template Versus Standard Values

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Data Definition Steps

Apply – Topic 2.5 – Optional
Create a Bicycle Details Data Template
Overview Steps
This is a summary lab based on everything you have learned in this module. Refer to previous labs for detailed
instructions.
Using Sitecore Rocks, create a Bicycle Details data template using the following information:
 The data template must inherit from Base.
 The data template must contain the following fields:
Bicycle Details
Bicycle Information
Field name

Single‐line text

Single‐line text

© Sitecore 2014

It must be possible for authors to create Bicycle Details items under Trip Details items.
The Suitability field should contain “All” by default.

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Presentation
Contents









© Sitecore 2014

Presentation Is Dynamic and Modular
Preparing to Build
Creating a Layout
Creating Components
Dynamic Binding
Rendering Content
Summary and Optional Lab

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Presentation Is Dynamic and Modular
Introduction
Objectives
By the end of this topic you will be able to:

Explain how Sitecore resolves a page compared to a static site.
Define presentation details in general terms.

Content
How Sitecore Resolves a Page

A Detailed Look at a Request

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Presentation Details

Demo – Modify a Presentation with Page Editor
In this demo we will:
 Create a new Standard Content item in Traincore.
 Use Sitecore Rocks to view the presentation.
 Add a Banner and General Widget component to the newly created page.
 Use Sitecore Rocks to view changes in presentation.

Tip
To view an item’s presentation details in Sitecore Rocks, select the item and press CTRL+U:

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Preparing to Build
Introduction
Objectives
By the end of this topic you will be able to:

Break a design into components.
Set up a Visual Studio project to work with Sitecore.

Content
Break Your Design into Components

Tip
For more information on how to componentize a page, see the Page Editor Recommended Practices
Guide for developers on the SDN:
http://sdn.sitecore.net/reference/sitecore%207/page%20editor%20recommended%20practices%20for
%20developers.aspx

How Would You Componentize Your own Sites?

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Create a Visual Studio Project

Demo – Creating a Project
In this demo we will:
 Create a new ASP.NET Empty Web Application (C#) project in Visual Studio 2012 called
BasicSitecore to correspond to our Sitecore instance.
 Move the .sln and .csproj files into the web root.
 Include the web.config and Layouts folder.
 Connect the project to Sitecore Rocks
 Add a reference to the Sitecore.Kernell.dll.
You will perform these tasks in the upcoming demo.

Important
In the development environment, we recommend that you work outside the web root and deploy your
files on a fresh Sitecore instance. To do this, use Publish Profiles or a product like Hedgehog’s Team
Development for Sitecore.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Apply – Topic 3.2
Create a Visual Studio Project and Connect It to Sitecore Rocks
In the following labs, you will set up a Visual Studio project to work with Sitecore.

Lab A. Create an ASP.NET Empty Web Application Project in the Web Root

Overview Steps
Optional detailed steps are available below to help you.
In Visual Studio, create an ASP.NET Empty Web Application in the Sitecore website’s web root. Name it
BasicSitecore. You do not need to create an entirely new folder for BasicSitecore.
In the file system, move the following files and folders out of the newly created project folder and into the
Website root:
 .sln
 .csproj
 Properties folder
 obj folder
Delete what remains in the project folder. Open the .sln file in its new location and move the layouts folder
into the project.

Detailed Steps
If you completed the lab using the Overview Steps above, you do not need to follow these steps.
1.

Open Visual Studio.

On the Visual Studio toolbar, select File>New>Project…

Select ASP.NET Empty Web Application (C#) from Visual C# > Web section:

Name the project BasicSitecore, and change the Location to the web root of your Sitecore instance.
This differs depending on the computer you are using, but is likely to be:
C:\inetpub\wwwroot\BasicSitecore\Website.
The web root specifically refers to the Website folder, where the web.config lives.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Clear the Create directory for solution checkbox. Your screen should look something like this:

The solution will appear in a subfolder in the web root. Some of the contents of this subfolder need to be
moved into the web root. Close the solution navigating to File>Close Solution on the Visual Studio
toolbar.

In the file system, navigate to your Sitecore website’s web root. For example:
C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\BasicSitecore\Website

Locate the BasicSitecore folder that you just created:

10. Open this folder. Copy the following files and folders into the web root (one folder above). Your files
should end up on the same level as Sitecore’s own web.config:






BasicSitecore.sln
BasicSitecore.csproj
Properties
obj

Do not overwrite Sitecore’s own web.config. Your project folders and files are now mixed in with the
default Sitecore folders and files in the web root:

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

11. You can now delete the remaining BasicSitecore folder from the web root.
12. Go back to Visual Studio and open the .sln file from its new location inside the web root
13. Double‐click the web.config file. Confirm that it is Sitecore’s web.config file, which is much larger than
your project’s web.config file (you can also search for sitecore).
14. In Solution Explorer, select the BasicSitecore project and click Show All Files:

15. Right‐click on the layouts folder and select Include in project. Click Show All Files again to hide all other
hidden files. Your final project should look like this:

Lab B. Connect Your Project to Sitecore Rocks

Overview Steps
Optional detailed steps are available below to help you.
Right‐click the BasicSitecore project and select Sitecore>Connect to Sitecore…
Locate your instance in the list and click OK to connect it to your project.

Detailed Steps
If you completed the lab using the Overview Steps above, you do not need to follow these steps.
1.

In Visual Studio, right‐click the BasicSitecore project.

Select Sitecore>Connect to Sitecore...

Locate the BasicSitecore instance in the list, select it, and click OK:

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Lab C. Add a Reference to the Sitecore.Kernel.dll

Overview Steps
Optional detailed steps are available below to help you.
Add a reference to libraries\Sitecore.Kernel.dll to the project.

Detailed steps
If you completed the lab using the Overview Steps above, you do not need to follow these steps.
1.

In the web root, create a libraries folder.

In Visual Studio, expand the BasicSitecore project.

Right‐click References and select Add Reference…

Click Browse in the bottom right‐hand corner:

Browse to BasicSitecore web root and open the bin folder. Your path may be:
c:\inetpub\wwwroot\BasicSitecore\Website\bin

Put a copy of bin\Sitecore.Kernel.dll in the libraries folder.

Select libraries\Sitecore.Kernel.dll and click Add. Confirm that the Sitecore.Kernel appears in the
References list:

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Creating a Layout
Introduction
Objectives
By the end of this topic you will be able to:

Create a layout using Sitecore Rocks.
Assign a layout to a data template’s standard values.

Content
One Layout for All Items Within a Site

What Is a Layout?

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Assigning a Layout

Creating and Assigning a Layout
In this demo we will:
 Create a layout using Sitecore Rocks – this creates both the file and the item.
 Paste sample HTML into the layout .aspx file.
 Assign layout to Base data template’s standard values.
 Preview an item that inherits from Base.

Apply – Topic 3.3
Creating and Assigning a Layout
In the following labs you will use Sitecore Rocks to:

Create a layout called Main and populate the .aspx file with some sample HTML.
Assign the layout to the Base data template’s standard values.
Preview an existing item.

Create a Layout Called Main

Overview Steps
Optional detailed steps are available below to help you.
Using Visual Studio’s Solution Explorer, create a new Sitecore layout in the layouts folder. When you are
prompted by Sitecore Rocks to choose a location for the corresponding item, navigate to:
/BasicSitecore/master/sitecore/Layout/Layouts.

Detailed Steps
If you completed the lab using the Overview Steps above, you do not need to follow these steps.
1.

Open the Visual Studio Solution Explorer (not the Sitecore Explorer)

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Right‐click the Layouts folder and select Add>New item…

In the Add New Item dialog, locate the Sitecore templates in the left‐hand column. Expand the tree
until you see Layouts, and select it.

Select Layout in the right‐hand panel, and call it Main.aspx:

Click Add, and wait for Sitecore Rocks to prompt you to create an item.

When prompted by Sitecore Rocks to create a layout item, navigate to:
/BasicSitecore/master/sitecore/Layouts and select it.

Using Sitecore Explorer, right‐click and refresh the /BasicSitecore/master/sitecore/Layouts item.

Confirm that that the Main layout item appears:

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Paste Sample HTML into the Main.aspx File

Overview Steps
Optional detailed steps are available below to help you.
Using Visual Studio’s Solution Explorer , paste the following sample HTML into your Main.aspx file. Ensure
that you do not accidentally delete the page directive at the top.
Drag and drop the css and img folders from Student Resources Folder > WND Labs > Module 3 > Topic
3.3 > campaign‐page.html into your Visual Studio solution.

Cycling holidays

Cycle London
Discover Helsinki in 5 Days
Discover Copenhagen

Would you like to win a holiday to the Welsh mountains for you and your family? 3 days of mountain biking and adventures.

Detailed Steps
If you completed the lab using the Overview Steps above, you do not need to follow these steps.
1.

Open the Visual Studio’s Solution Explorer (not the Sitecore Explorer).

Open Main.aspx, located in the layouts folder.

Delete the sample HTML, taking care not to delete the top three lines:

Code Sample
<%@ Page language="c#" Codepage="65001" AutoEventWireup="true"
Inherits="BasicSitecore.layouts.Main" CodeBehind="Main.aspx.cs" %>
<%@ Register TagPrefix="sc" Namespace="Sitecore.Web.UI.WebControls" Assembly="Sitecore.Kernel"
%>
<%@ OutputCache Location="None" VaryByParam="none" %>

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum
4.

Website Development for.Net Developer

Paste the following sample HTML from the Student Resources Folder > WND Labs > Module 3 > Topic
3.3 > Lab 3.3B‐Code‐Sample.html file from the Student Resources folder_v7.2.0.1, into the file below
the top three lines:

Cycling holidays

Cycle London
Discover Helsinki in 5 Days
Discover Copenhagen

Would you like to win a holiday to the Welsh mountains for you and your family? 3 days of mountain biking and adventures.

On the file system, browse to Student Resources Folder > WND Labs > Module 3 >Topic 3.3.

Drag and drop the img and css folders into the Visual Studio’s Solution Explorer. The folders should
end up on the same level as the layouts folder:

Build the solution.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Assign Layout to Base Standard Values and Preview Family Holidays Item

Overview Steps
Optional detailed steps are available below to help you.
Using Sitecore Explorer, assign the Main layout to the Holiday Section standard values, preview the
Family Holidays item. Confirm that your sample HTML is now being displayed, including images and CSS.

Detailed Steps
If you completed the lab using the Overview Steps above, you do not need to follow these steps.
1.

Open the Sitecore Explorer in Visual Studio.

Navigate to: /BasicSitecore/master/sitecore/templates/User Defined/Holiday Section/__Standard Values
Right‐click on the standard values item and select Tasks > Design Layout.

In the Layout dropdown, choose the Main layout:

Navigate to: /BasicSitecore/master/sitecore/Content/Home/Family Holidays

Right‐click the item and select Tools>Browse>Preview.

Confirm that the Family Holidays item looks like this:

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Creating Components
Introduction
Objectives
By the end of this topic you will be able to:

Create a sublayout using Sitecore Rocks.
Name three types of Sitecore components.

Content
Movable, Reusable Components

What Is a Component?

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Tip – Sitecore MVC Videos
Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3Mwcphtz4w
Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dW_rQp9bMmE

What Is a Sitecore Sublayout?

Demo – Creating a Sublayout
In this demo we will:
 Create a sublayout called Introduction.
 Move the heading, content, and image from Main.aspx into the Introduction sublayout.
You will perform these tasks in the upcoming lab.

Apply – Topic 3.4
Create a Sublayout
In the following lab you will create a new sublayout called Introduction and move the heading, text, and
image from the sample HTML in Main.aspx into the Introduction.ascx.

Lab A. Create a Sublayout Called Introduction

Overview Steps
Optional detailed steps are available below to help you.
Using Sitecore Rocks, create a new sublayout called Introduction. Ensure that the corresponding definition
item is created under: /BasicSitecore/master/sitecore/Layout/Sublayouts.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Detailed Steps
If you completed the lab using the Overview Steps above, you do not need to follow these steps.
1.

In Visual Studio, open the Solution Explorer (not Sitecore Explorer).

Right‐click the layouts folder and select Add>New Item…

In the Add New Item dialog, navigate to Sitecore>Renderings in the left‐hand menu.

Select Sublayout in the right‐hand panel and name it Introduction:

Click Add, and wait for Sitecore Rocks to prompt you to add a corresponding item.

In the New Item dialog, expand the BasicSitecore tree until you can see the Sublayouts item under:
/BasicSitecore/master/sitecore/Layout/Sublayouts:

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Lab B. Move the Heading, Text, and Image Sample HTML from Main.aspx into Introduction.ascx

Overview Steps
Optional detailed steps are available below to help you.
In Visual Studio, cut the sample HTML from Main.aspx that contains the sample heading, image, and text.
Insert it into Introduction.ascx instead. For reference, the HTML is available below. Ensure that Main.aspx
no longer has this HTML.

Cycling holidays

Cycle London
Discover Helsinki in 5 Days
Discover Copenhagen

Would you like to win a holiday to the Welsh mountains for you and your family? 3 days of mountain biking and adventures.

Preview the Family Holidays item. The page should be blank.

Detailed Steps
If you completed the lab using the Overview Steps above, you do not need to follow these steps.
1. In Visual Studio’s Solution Explorer, double‐click Main.aspx to open it.
2. Locate the following HTML:

Cycling holidays

Cycle London
Discover Helsinki in 5 Days
Discover Copenhagen

Would you like to win a holiday to the Welsh mountains for you and your family? 3 days of mountain biking and adventures.

3. Cut this HTML from Main.aspx (or copy it from the code sample above) and paste it into
Introduction.ascx. Take care not to delete the top two lines of the .ascx file.
4. Ensure that Main.aspx no longer contains the sample HTML above.
5. Build the solution.
6. Using Sitecore Explorer, right‐click: /BasicSitecore/sitecore/master/sitecore/Content/Home/Family Holidays
Then select Tasks>Browse>Preview. Confirm that the page is blank.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Dynamic Binding
Introduction
Objectives
By the end of this topic, you will be able to:

Assemble a page using dynamic binding.
Explain the pros and cons of static binding.

Content
How Do You Bind Components to a Layout?

What Are Placeholders?

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Binding Components to Placeholders

Demo – Holidays Section Presentation Details
In this demo we will:
 Create a maincontent placeholder in Main.aspx.
 Bind Introduction component to the maincontent placeholder on Hoidays Section
standard values.
 Preview Family Holidays.
 Add an additional Introduction component to Family Holidays and reset the
presentation.
You will perform these tasks in the upcoming lab.

Dynamic vs. Static Binding

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Resetting the Presentation

Apply – Topic 3.5
Bind Components to Placeholders on Standard Values
Lab A. Add a Placeholder to Main.aspx

Overview Steps
Optional detailed steps are available below to help you.
In Visual Studio, open Main.aspx. Add a placeholder with a key of maincontent into the space where you cut
the heading, image, and text HTML. Hint: inside the tag with the class “container”.

Detailed Steps
If you completed the lab using the Overview Steps above, you do not need to follow these steps.
1.

Open the Visual Studio’s Solution Explorer (not the Sitecore Explorer).

Open Main.aspx, located in the layouts folder.

Inside the tag with the class “container”, insert a placeholder with a key of maincontent:

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Lab B. Bind Introduction to the Maincontent Placeholder on Base Standard Values

Overview Steps
Optional detailed steps are available below to help you.
Assign the Introduction component to the maincontent placeholder on the Base data template’s standard
values.

Detailed Steps
If you completed the lab using the Overview Steps above, you do not need to follow these steps.
1.

Using the Sitecore Explorer, locate the Base data template’s standard values:
/BasicSitecore/master/sitecore/Templates/User Defined/Base/__Standard Values.

Right‐click the __Standard Values item and select Tasks>Design Layout.

In the Presentation Details window, click Add Rendering:

Enter Introduction in the Search field. Ensure that All is selected on the left‐hand menu:

Select the Introduction rendering and click OK.

Double‐click the Introduction rendering to open the Properties window.

In the PlaceholderKey field, type maincontent.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Lab C. Create and Bind the Trip Overview Component to Trip Details Standard Values

Overview Steps
Optional detailed steps are available below to help you.
Create a new component called Trip Overview. Use the following sample HTML, or copy from Student
Resources Folder > WND Labs > Module 3 >Topic 3.5 > trip‐overview.html:

Date
20th April 2014

Price per person
£2000 per person

Bind this component to the maincontent placeholder on the Trip Details data template’s standard values.
Hint: This data template inherits from base. When prompted, copy the layout from the standard values
item.
Build the solution and look at the Explore Holland item in the Page Editor. Confirm that you are able to
select the Trip Overview component.

Detailed steps
If you completed the lab using the Overview Steps above, you do not need to follow these steps.
1.

In Visual Studio’s Solution Explorer, right‐click the layouts folder and select Add>New Item…

Create a new Sitecore sublayout. Name it Trip Overview, and wait for the prompt from Sitecore Rocks
to create a corresponding item.

When prompted by Sitecore Rocks to create a new sublayout item, select:
/BasicSitecore/master/sitecore/Layout/Sublayouts and click OK.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Open the Trip Overview.ascx file.

Copy the following sample HTML into the .ascx file. Take care not to delete the two lines of code already
in the file:

Date
20th April 2014

Price per person
£2000 per person

Build the solution and click Save.

Using the Sitecore Explorer, locate the Trip Details item under:
/BasicSitecore/master/sitecore/Templates/User Defined/Trip Details.

Double‐click the item to open it.

Right‐click inside the grey area in the right‐hand content panel and select Create Standard Values.

10. When the newly created __Standard Values item appears, press CTRL+U to open the presentation
details. Make sure that you have selected the __Standard Values item before you do this.
11. When you are prompted to choose an action, select Copy and edit the layout from the Standard Value
item (if any) to this item:

12. Click Add Rendering.
13. Search for the Trip Overview component, select it, and click OK.
14. Double‐click on the Trip Overview component to open its properties.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

15. In the PlaceholderKey field, type maincontent.

16. Click Save.
17. In Sitecore Explorer, navigate to /BasicSitecore/master/sitecore/Content/Home/Family Holidays and select
the Explore Holland item.
18. Right‐click and select Tools>Browse>Page Editor.
19. On the View tab of the Page Editor, ensure that the Designing checkbox is selected:

20. Confirm that you are able to select the Trip Overview component.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Outputting Content
Introduction
Objectives
By the end of this topic, you will be able to:

Output content using a number of Sitecore controls.
Use Sitecore control parameters to vary the output of Sitecore controls.

Content
How Do You Output Content?

Sitecore Controls Have Optional Attributes

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Apply – Topic 3.6
Output Content Using Sitecore Controls
Lab A. Swap All Sample Content for Sitecore Controls

Overview Steps
Optional detailed steps are available below to help you.
In Visual Studio, open Trip Overview.ascx and Introduction.ascx. Replace all sample content with actual
content by using Sitecore controls. Match the control used to the type of content being output.
Open various pages in the Page Editor and confirm that you are able to edit all content fields.

Detailed Steps
If you completed the lab using the Overview Steps above, you do not need to follow these steps.
1.

Open the Visual Studio’s Solution Explorer.

Open the Introduction.ascx file.

Replace the sample content inside the tag with a Sitecore Text control that outputs the Heading
field:

Replace the image tag with a Sitecore Image control that outputs the Main Image field.

Replace the sample text (everything under the green comment, including
paragraphs) with a Sitecore Text control that outputs the Main Content field.

Open Trip Overview.ascx.

Replace the sample date with a Sitecore Date control that outputs the Starting date field.
Replace the sample price with a Sitecore Text control that outputs the Price per person field.

Tip
Keep in mind that that field names are case sensitive.
9.

10. In Sitecore Explorer, locate the Explore Holland item:
(/BasicSitecore/master/sitecore/Content/Home/Family Holidays/Explore Holland).
11. Right‐click the Explore Holland item and select Tools>Browse>Page Editor.
12. In the Page Editor, select the Editing checkbox on the View tab.
13. Click into the Heading field – you are now able to edit this field in the Page Editor:

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Summary and Optional Lab
Introduction
Objectives
This topic covers:






A summary of key vocabulary
The Renderings field
A summary of key steps
An optional lab

Content
Vocabulary

The Renderings Field

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Review of Steps

Apply – Topic 3.7 – Optional
Set a Default Presentation on the Bicycle Detail Data Template
Overview Steps
This is a summary lab based on everything you have learned in this module. Refer to previous labs for detailed
instructions.
Using Sitecore Rocks, create a Bicycle Overview component using the following sample HTML or copy
from Student Resources Folder > WND Labs > Module 3 > Topic 3.7 > bicycle‐overview.html:

Suitability
Family outings, country lanes

Set up a default presentation for the Bicycle Details data template that includes the Introduction
component and the new Bicycle Overview component.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Sitecore API
Contents:





Basic API Concepts and Retrieving Items
Item Links
Creating, Deleting, and Modifying Items
Working with Complex Fields

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Basic API Concepts and Retrieving Items
Introduction
Objectives
By the end of this topic you will be able to:







Describe the information the Sitecore.Context class provides.
Discuss how Sitecore code is debugged in a .NET solution.
Use the GetItem() method to retrieve items.
Obtain a site’s start item.
Describe how to get items from another database.

Content
Sitecore.Kernel Assembly

Knowledge Check
When you view a page in Preview mode, which context database is accessed?

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Sitecore Context

Demo – Basic API
In this demo we will:
 Explore Sitecore.Context

In Visual Studio, open the code behind for any existing sublayout
(for example, Introduction.ascx.cs).

Ensure that the Debug configuration is selected.

In the Page_Load method, retrieve a few properties from the
Sitecore.Context class (for example, Database, Item, User, and Language).

Build the solution.

Insert a break‐point, attach it to w3wp, and navigate to a page that uses that sublayout to execute the
code.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

The GetItem() Method

Getting Items from Other Databases

Important
You must not query the Sitecore databases directly. (This excludes the analytics database.) Always go
through the API.

Tip
Item item1 = Sitecore.Context.Database.GetItem("/sitecore/content/home");
Item item2 = Sitecore.Context.Database.GetItem("/sitecore/content/home");
if(item1==item2) // this is always false;
You are comparing references to objects. The variables above are pointing to different objects, although
they are the same item in Sitecore.
Since Sitecore items are uniquely identifiable by their IDs, comparisons should be done on the item ID.
if(item1.ID==item2.ID) // do something;

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Demo – Retrieving Items
In the following demo, we will
 Use .GetItem() to retrieve an item by path and ID
 Explore Item properties and methods
 Use .GetChildren()and .Children

In Visual Studio, open the code behind for any existing sublayout (for example, Introduction.ascx.cs)

Retrieve an item from the Sitecore tree using the Sitecore.Context.Database.GetItem() method – either
by passing in a path, or an ID:

Code Sample – Item Properties
Sitecore.Context.Database.GetItem("/sitecore/content/home");
Sitecore.Context.Database.GetItem(new ID("{E1B92921‐75C9‐475A‐A04C‐67401C54B39A}"));

Look at the following properties and methods of the Item class (try using the /sitecore/content/Home
item):

Code Sample – Item Properties and Methods
Sitecore.Context.Item.Parent.Name;
Sitecore.Context.Item.GetChildren();
Sitecore.Context.Item.Children;

Notice that Sitecore.Context.Item.GetChildren() allows you to pass in a
Sitecore.Collections.ChildListOptions enum (for example, to ignore any security applied on those items).

Build the solution.

Add a break‐point and attach it to w3wp.

In a browser, navigate to a page that uses the sublayout that you modified. Step through to see what
each property or method returns.

Apply – Topic 4.1 – 30 min
Render Item Children
In the following lab, you will:

Build a subnavigation component to output the children of the context item in a list.
Leave the href attribute blank.
In a later exercise, you will populate the link’s href attributes with the item URL.

Lab A. Build a Navigation Sublayout
1.

Using Visual Studio, add a new sublayout called Subnavigation (use Add > New Item…).

Navigate to Sitecore and, on the Renderings menu, select the Sublayout option.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

You will be prompted to add an accompanying sublayout definition item. Select your location in the
Sitecore tree.

Copy the HTML from the student resource folder (WND Labs > Module 4 > Topic 4.1 > Lab A > HTML >
campaign‐page‐navigation.html), and paste it into the .ascx file.
Do not overwrite everything in the .ascx. Keep the directives and includes at the top of the file.
The finished product will look like this:

Using Sitecore Rocks, navigate to the Holidays Section data template standard values at
/sitecore/templates/User Defined/Holidays Section/__Standard Values.

Right‐click the standard values item and select the Tasks > Design Layout options, or use Commandy.

Add a new rendering using the Add Rendering button.

Add the Subnavigation sublayout to the main placeholder. Ensure that it is listed below the
Introduction sublayout.

10. Save your work and preview the Family Holidays item. You should see the Subnavigation sublayout at
the bottom of the page. (If you do not see it, reset presentation details to standard value).
11. In Visual Studio, navigate to the Subnavigation sublayout’s code behind.
12. In the Page_Load method, get the context item’s children (trip details items) as a list.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

13. Bind this list to a repeater. There is a partially completed code sample in the student resource folder
(WND Labs > Module 4 > Topic 4.1 > Lab A > Code > Subnavigation.ascx / Subnavigation.ascx.cs ).
14. For each item that has been bound to the repeater, output a standard .NET HyperLink object into the
repeater’s .
IMPORTANT! For the purposes of this lab, set the NavigateURL property to #

Code Sample – Item Properties

Tip
You do not need to use the OnItemDataBound property for this exercise.
The sample code uses a strongly‐typed repeater – ItemType="Sitecore.Data.Items.Item". This means that
you can use the following syntax to output properties of the object, for example, the parent ID of the
item. Note the colon after the #. This automatically escapes any HTML.
<%#: Item.ParentID %>

15. Save.
16. Using a browser, navigate to: http://BasicSitecore/Family Holidays. Confirm that the Subnavigation
component now appears and that it is listing the child items by item name:

© Sitecore 2014

Content API Cookbook
http://sdn.sitecore.net/upload/sitecore6/64/content_api_cookbook_sc64_and_later‐a4.pdf
Data Definition API Cookbook
http://sdn.sitecore.net/Reference/Sitecore%207/Data%20Definition%20API%20Cookbook.aspx

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Item Links
Introduction
Objectives
By the end of this topic you will be able to:








Explain what the ItemResolver does.
Explain what the LinkManager does.
Resolve a URL to an item.
Resolve an item to a URL.
Use URL options to output a URL in a context language.
Customize LinkManager.

Content
The ItemResolver

Knowledge Check
What issue do you see with duplicate URLs for the same item?

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

LinkManager and Item URLs

Demo – Retrieving an Item’s URL
In the following demo, we will:

Retrieve item URL using LinkManager.GetItemUrl()
Use UrlOptions to output display name
Change item display name in Sitecore

Using Visual Studio, open a sublayout, such as Introduction.ascx, and add a Literal control. Set the ID
to ItemUrl.

Open that same sublayout’s code file, for example, Introduction.ascx.cs.

In the Page_Load method, use Sitecore.Links.LinkManager.GetItemUrl() to retrieve the URL of the
context item as a string, and set the .Text property of the Literal control to this value.

Code Sample – Retrieving Item URL
LinkManager.GetItemUrl(Sitecore.Context.Item);
4.

In the same file, before retrieving the context item’s URL, create a UrlOptions object and set the
UseDisplayName property to true.

Pass the object into the Sitecore.Links.LinkManager.GetItemUrl() method along with the context item.

Code Sample – Retrieving Item URL
UrlOptions options = new UrlOptions();
options.UseDisplayName = true;

Browse to a page containing the sublayout that you edited. The URL of the context item is displayed as
a string.

Using the Sitecore Desktop, open the Content Editor and locate the /sitecore/content/Home/Family
Holidays item.

Change to another language, for example, Danish.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum
9.

Website Development for.Net Developer

Select the Home tab > Display Name command, and change the display name to ferier.

10. The content tree will refresh and display the Danish word for holidays in the tree as well as in the
content pane. Note the original item name in square brackets next to the display name.
11. Change the language back and notice that the item display name changes again.
12. In your browser, change the context language to the language you previously set the alternative display
name in. Use ?sc_lang= query string at the end of the URL in the browser’s address bar.
13. Press the ENTER key on the keyboard. The Literal control now displays a URL containing the word ferier.

Controlling Your URLs

Tip – Media Item URLS
Notice that we are instantiating a MediaItem object that accepts a regular Item. The MediaItem class is a
wrapper that allows you to access properties that are only relevant to media items, such as its extension,
or whether or not it’s file‐based.
string path = "/sitecore/media library/images/example";

Item item = Sitecore.Context.Database.GetItem(path);
MediaItem mediaItem = new MediaItem(item);
MediaUrlOptions options = new MediaUrlOptions();
options.MaxWidth = 200;
string url = MediaManager.GetMediaUrl(mediaItem, options);

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Apply – Topic 4.2 – 10 min
Render Item Links
In the following lab, you will:

Modify the Subnavigation sublayout that you created in the previous lab to output item
links.

Lab A. Rendering Subnavigation Links
1.

In Visual Studio, open the Subnavigation sublayout that you created in an earlier lab and open the .ascx
file.

Within the repeater, use the Sitecore.Links.LinkManager.GetItemUrl() method to output each repeater
item’s URL as the Hyperlink control’s .NavigateURL property.

Within the GetItemUrl() method, use an instance of UrlOptions to specify that the URLs should contain
the item’s display names.

Tip
You can do all of this on one line.
Create a new URLOptions object inside the GetItemURL method:
new Sitecore.Links.UrlOptions { PropertyName = x })

Save and solution and then browse to the http://BasicSitecore/Family Holidays page. Confirm that you
can now use the Subnavigation list to navigate to trip details sub‐pages.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Creating, Modifying, and Deleting Items
Introduction
Objectives
By the end of this topic you will be able to:








Describe the implications of choosing the correct database to retrieve an item from.
Choose the correct user to perform an operation on an item.
Place an item into an editable state.
Create an item programmatically.
Update a simple item via its raw value.
Make a modified item live on the web database.

Content
Fields and Raw Values

Getting and Setting Values

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Demo – Outputting Raw Values
In the following lab, you will:

View raw values of items in Rocks
Output raw value to the browser – it will not be editable in the Page Editor

In Sitecore Rocks, double‐click an item to open it. Select an item that has a populated image field, such
as a child of /sitecore/content/Home/Family Holidays.

Right‐click in a grey area between fields and select Raw Values.

Notice that the value is custom XML, and not an image tag.

Using Visual Studio, open an existing sublayout’s code behind (for example, Introduction.ascx.cs).

In the Page_Load method, retrieve the Heading field as a Field object:

Code Sample – Field object
Field headingField = Sitecore.Context.Item.Fields["Heading"];
string headingValue = headingField.Value;
6.

Bind the value of the field to a Literal control.

In a browser, preview a page that utilizes the sublayout, then switch to Page Editor.
Note that the value is not editable. This is because we have output a raw value rather than a rendered
value.

Knowledge Check
Why might it be difficult to set the value of an image or link field when you output raw values?

Creating and Editing Items

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Security and Editing Contexts

Code Sample – UserSwitcher
if (User.Exists(user.Name)) {
using (new UserSwitcher(user)) { }
}

Tip
Editing.EndEdit(); returns a bool that indicates whether your item was successfully saved. It also has some

overloads that allow you to save in a silent manner, without raising any events. This can be useful when
modifying an item as part of an event, so you do not end up creating an endless recursion.

Demo – Creating and editing an item
In the following demo, we will:

Programmatically create an item based on the Trip Details template

In Visual Studio, locate an existing sublayout (for example, Introduction.ascx).

Create a button with an OnClick event.

In the OnClick event, create a new item based on the Trip Details data template beneath the
/sitecore/content/Home/Family Holidays item:

Code Sample – Creating and Editing an Item
using (new SecurityDisabler())
{
// You should create new items in the master database
Database master = Sitecore.Configuration.Factory.GetDatabase("master");
Item holidayParent = master.GetItem("/sitecore/content/home/Family Holidays");

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

// Get the ID of the data template, and check that item name is valid
ID sitecoreID = new Sitecore.Data.ID("{565A8A17‐032F‐44AC‐B506‐B65F27A31241}");
TemplateID templateID = new TemplateID(sitecoreID);

string name = ItemUtil.ProposeValidItemName("Cycle the Cotswolds");
// .Add will return the newly created item as an object
Item newItem = holidayParent.Add(name, templateID);

// Edit this new item's fields
newItem.Editing.BeginEdit();
Field heading = newItem.Fields["Heading"];
heading.Value = "Our fantastic holidays";
newItem.Editing.EndEdit();

Response.Redirect(LinkManager.GetItemUrl(Sitecore.Context.Item), false);
}

Save the solution.

Using a browser, navigate to a page that contains the sublayout with the button that you created. Click
the button and your code will execute.

Browse to the newly created item (/Family Holidays/Cycle the Cotswolds).

Recommended Practices
Do not hard code references to templates. Use a centralized class (for example, TemplateReferences.cs)
with static properties for template GUID.

Knowledge Check
If you create an item in the master database, what needs to happen before it will be visible on the site?

Tip – Creating a TemplateID Object
Sitecore defines an ID class that accepts a string or GUID:
ID sitecoreID = new Sitecore.Data.ID("{565A8A17‐032F‐44AC‐B506‐B65F27A31241}");
TemplateID accepts an ID object:
TemplateID templateID = new TemplateID(sitecoreID);

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Recommended Practices

Tip – Deleting Items
You can delete an item using item.Recycle() or item.Delete(). Using item.Recycle()
will move the item in Sitecore’s recycling bin if the RecycleBinActive setting in the web.config is set to
true. If this setting is set to true, item.Delete() will redirect to item.Recycle().

Tip – Publishing Items
When you create or delete an item programmatically in the master database, the changes will not
appear in the web database unless you publish. Your options here are:

Publish programmatically
Wait for a scheduled publishing task to publish the entire tree
If the item goes into a workflow (covered in Module 9), wait for it to be manually reviewed and
approved by a moderator

Apply – Topic 4.3 – 30 min
Create and Edit Items
A common example of when you might want to create new Sitecore items programmatically is a
commenting system (for example, allowing anonymous visitors to comment on particular trips they have
been on). In the following labs, you will:

© Sitecore 2014

Create a Comment data template.
Create a Comments Submission sublayout with a form, and assign it to the Trip Details
template standard values.Create a button OnClick action that creates a new item.

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Lab A. Create Comment Data Template
1.

Using Sitecore Rocks, create a Comment data template with the following fields:

Field section
Comment
Field name

Single‐line text

Assign a template icon (for example, user1_message.png).

Save and publish the data template.

Knowledge Check
In this instance, you might not need to assign the Comment data template as an insert option on
the Trip Details data template standard values. Why not?

Knowledge Check
What would happen if you browsed to: /holiday‐1/comment‐1?

Lab B. Create a Comments Form Sublayout
1.

Create a new sublayout called Comments Form (use Add > New Item… and select Renderings >
Sublayout from the Sitecore menu).

Create standard .NET form inputs for Comment Author and Comment Text. There is sample code
available in the student resources folder (WND Labs > Module 4 > Topic 4.3 > Lab B > Code >
CommentsForm.ascx).

Assign the sublayout to the maincontent placeholder on the Trip Details data template standard
values.

Publish Sitecore.

Confirm that the form appears on every instance of the Trip Details data template.

Lab C. Create Comment Items from Form Inputs
Finally, wire up the form so that submitting it creates a new item, beneath the context trip details item,
based on the Comment data template.

Open Comments Form.ascx.cs. You will find a partially completed code sample with an OnClick
method (btnSubmit_Click) in the student resources folder (WND Labs > Module 4 > Topic 4.3 > Lab C >
Code > CommentsForm.ascx.cs).
For the remaining steps in Lab C and Lab D, comments are available in CommentsForm.ascx.cs to guide
you.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum
2.

Website Development for.Net Developer

In the button’s OnClick method, start by retrieving the context item from the master database
(consider using Sitecore.Configuration.Factory.GetDatabase(). In this particular case, the item will be of
type Trip Details.

Knowledge Check
Why are you getting the comment from the master database in this instance?

Having retrieved your intended comments parent (the context trip item), wrap your item creation code
in an instance of Sitecore.SecurityModel.SecurityDisabler.

Knowledge Check
Is there another method that you could use instead of Sitecore.SecurityModel.SecurityDisabler? Why is it
not best practice to use SecurityDisabler?

Use the .Add() method on the trip item that you retrieved from the master database to insert a new
comment item as a child. This method will return an Item object.

Set the template parameter to the Comments template you created in Lab A.

Tip
Create a Sitecore ID object from the template’s GUID, and then use that to create a TemplateID object that
the .Add() method can accept.
6.

Set the name parameter to the current date/time in ISO format. Use the Sitecore.DateUtil.IsoNow
property.

Save the solution.

Browse to a trip page and submit the form.

Confirm that child items appear under the context Trip Details item. Unless you populated the data
template’s standard values, the comment items’ fields will not contain any data.

Lab D. Populate Comments Item with Form Values
1.

After using the Add() method to create a new item, put the resulting item in an editing state using the
.Editing.BeginEdit() method.

Set the Comment Author and Comment Text field values to the corresponding form input values. At
this point, you may want to use HttpUtility.HtmlEncode() to sanitize your input.

Code sample – Retrieving Field Value
item.Fields["Comment Author"].Value = CommentAuthorInput.Text;

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Knowledge Check
Given that all field values are stored as strings, why can’t you set the Comment Date field value to a
DateTime.Now?

Finish editing by calling the Editing.EndEdit() method.

Save the solution.

Browse to a trip page, fill in and submit the form.

In Sitecore Rocks, confirm that the child items created under the context trip now contain your form
content.

© Sitecore 2014

Information on programmatically publishing is in the API cookbook ‐ section 2
http://sdn.sitecore.net/upload/sitecore6/64/content_api_cookbook‐a4.pdf

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Working with Complex Fields
Introduction
Objectives
By the end of this topic you will be able to:






Describe the correct way to retrieve complex field values.
Get and set content in complex fields.
Use ImageField, LinkField, ReferenceField and MultilistField.
Render fields using the FieldRenderer.

Content
RECAP: Field Types

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Base Field Object

ImageField object

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Best Practice
Do not manually construct an tag from an ImageField object and render it to the page
because the values will not be editable in Page Editor.

LinkField Object

Best Practice
Do not manually construct an tag from a LinkField object and render it to the page. The
values will not be editable in Page Editor.

ReferenceField object

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

MultilistField Object

Some Fields Can Be ‘Rendered’

FieldRenderer.Render()

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Image Parameters
Parameter

Property affected

Background Color

Scale (floating point)

Recommended Practice
Always go through the Fieldrenderer method when you are rendering field content to the screen. This
method allows:

© Sitecore 2014

Your field to be editable in Page Editor.
Override properties to be specified by the author (for example, the Class on a link or the
Width on an image).
Links in Rich Text fields to be transformed into SEO‐friendly URLs.

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Demo –Using FieldRenderer
In the following demo, we will:

Use the FieldRenderer.Render() method with a few parameters to output an image field.

Using Visual Studio, open the Introduction sublayout’s code behind.

In the Page_Load method, render the Main Image field and bind the resulting string to a Literal control.

Pass in a number of parameters that are relevant to Image fields (for example, max width and max
height [mw=200&mh=100]).

Show that these parameters are represented as properties on an image control.

Apply – Topic 4.4 – 50 min
Populate and Render Complex Fields
In the following labs, you will:

Add a General Link field to your Comment data template that accepts the comment
author’s website.
Create a new sublayout that renders a list of comments at the bottom of pages based on
the Trip Details template.

Lab A. Populate a Comment Link Field
1.

Using Sitecore Rocks, locate the Comment data template and add the following additional field:

Field section
Comment
Field Name
Comment Author Website

Field
General Link

Using Visual Studio, open Comments Form.ascx and add a textbox input for a link. There is sample
code for this additional field in the student resource folder (WND Labs > Module 4 > Topic 4.4 > Lab A >
Code > CommentsForm.ascx). Do not overwrite the contents of your file; insert the sample.

Open Comment Form sublayout’s .cs file. Retrieve the Comment Author Website field as a LinkField
object where the comment item’s fields are being populated (between .BeginEdit and .EndEdit).

We want the rendered output to look like this: http://www.sitecore.net/. Set the following properties on
the LinkField object:

Object property

The contents of the link input (e.g. AuthorWebsite.Text)

The same contents of the link input (http://www.sitecore.net/)

Save and publish Sitecore.

Browse to a trip details page, fill in and submit the form.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum
7.

Website Development for.Net Developer

Switch to Sitecore Rocks and locate the newly created comment. Confirm that the link field is
populated with the form content.

Lab B. Render List of Comments
In the following lab, you will:
 Bind a list of comments to a repeater and output the author’s name, web address, and
comment.

Create a new sublayout called Comments List. Paste sample HTML for the comments list in the student
resources folder (WND Labs > Module 4 > Topic 4.4 > Lab B > HTML> campaign‐page‐comments.html).
Remember to append this sample HTML to the content already in the Comments List sublayout. Do not
overwrite the directives and include it at the top of the file.

Add the new sublayout to the standard values of the Trip Details data template, below the Comments
Form sublayout:

Save and publish Sitecore.

Browse to a trip details page to confirm that the sample HTML appears.

Replace the dummy HTML with a repeater. A sample repeater is available in (WND Labs > Module 4 >
Topic 4.4 > Lab B > Code > CommentsList.ascx).

Open the CommentsList.ascx code behind.

In the Page_Load method, retrieve the context item’s children and filter it so that only items with the
Comment data template are included.

Bind this list to the repeater.

Tip
Use .Where() to compare each item’s .ID to the ID of the Comment template:
.Where(x => x.TemplateID == MyTemplateIDObject))

In the repeater, use Sitecore controls (for example, ) to output the following field values:
a.

Comment Author (Text)

b. Comment Text (Text)
c.

Comment Author Website (Link)

d. Date created (Date – __Created field – use Sitecore.FieldIDs.Created to retrieve field and
considering experimenting with the Format attribute).
For each control, set the DataSource attribute to the repeater item’s ID property. This forces the control
to draw its content from that particular comment item as opposed to the context item.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Tip
Just as in Topic 4.1, we are using a strongly typed repeater. If you are using Sitecore controls in the
repeater, set each control’s DataSource property to the following:
DataSource="<%#: Item.ID %>"

Note the colon used above in the binding expressions: <%#: %>, by adding the colon the data being
bound is automatically HTML‐encoded.
Save the solution, then use a browser to preview a Trip details page. Use the form to add a few comments. The
final comments list should look like this:

Knowledge Check
When you submit a comment, why is it only visible in Preview mode?

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Advanced Presentation
Concepts
Contents:
●
●

Reusable Components
Layout Deltas

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Reusable Content
Introduction
Objectives
By the end of this topic you will be able to:
●
●
●
●
●

Define a datasource.
Retrieve the datasource from a component.
Describe the benefits of using parameters.
Set and retrieve parameters.
Describe what the ParseURLParameters utility does.

Content
Demo – What Is a Datasource?
In the following demo, we will:
●
●
●
●

Using TrainCore, in Page Editor design mode.
Change a General Widget’s datasource.
Add an additional General Widget to the page.
Illustrate the reuse of components and content.

Business Use Case
What if you have a quotes component that displays the same quote on a number of different
pages?
Without datasources, you must define those quote fields on every single item where you want to
display this quote. This results in content duplication.
What if you have a number of quotes that you want to display on one page, for example, on the
bottom‐right and on the top‐left?
Without datasources, you must define several fields with similar names so that you can target each
field individually, as well as several similar components (for example, Quote Title1, Quote Title2,
Quote Author1, Quote Author2 resulting in field duplication).
With datasources, you have one location in the tree with your quote items. Your quote component
accepts a datasource of one or more of those items and displays them, resulting in no duplication.

Log in to the Page Editor interface in Traincore, and ensure that design mode is enabled.
Change the datasource of a General Widget component on the home page to another item under:
/sitecore/content/sitecore‐cycling‐holidays/Global/reusable content.
Navigate to the which‐bike page. Add a General Widget to the left or right‐hand column of the page.
Set the datasource to the same item you used on the home page.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Knowledge Check
What kind of content can be global content?

What Is a Datasource?

Datasources Allow…

Best Practice
It is best practice to use IDs instead of paths. If the item gets renamed or changes location, the ID will
prevent a broken link. When a user selects a datasource in the UI, Sitecore inserts an ID by default.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Tip – XSLTs and Web Controls
In XSLT, the $sc_item variable represents the datasource. No additional configuration is required. If no
datasource has been specified, $sc_item defaults to the context item. By contrast, $sc_currentitem
always returns the context item.
Similarly, there is a base web control class named Sitecore.Web.UI.WebControl that provides the
GetItem() method to retrieve the datasource item.

Using the API for Sublayout Datasources

Knowledge Check
What If you need to get the datasource for several components – which you will – what could you do with
this code?

Forcing Controls to Use the Datasource

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Demo – Datasource API
In the following demo, we will:
● Modify the Trip Details component to accept a datasource.

Open http://BasicSitecore, and log into the Page Editor interface. Locate a page that displays the Trip
Overview component. Change the datasource of the component to another trip.

Save, and then switch to Visual Studio.

In the code‐behind for the Trip Overview component, wire up the two Sitecore controls to read their
content from a datasource. As a bonus, if no datasource exists, fall back to the context item.

Give each Sitecore control an ID.
In the code‐behind, retrieve this.Parent (the user control’s parent) and cast it as a
Sitecore.Web.UI.WebControls.Sublayout object. This object wraps the user control, and is
Sitecore‐specific.
Set .Item or .DataSource of each Sitecore control to the datasource provided by the Sublayout
object.

Tip
You can then check if the component has a datasource. If it does, then display it, otherwise return the
context item.

Tip
What if your component always had to accept a datasource? You can hide your controls by checking
what mode the page is using in Sitecore.Context.PageMode then performing your logic.

Save, and switch to the Page Editor.

Verify that the Sitecore controls are outputting content from the chosen datasource, not the context
item. Change the datasource again to confirm.

Tip
You can use Sitecore Rocks to set the datasource of a component. Select the content item whose
presentation details you wish to edit, and press CTRL+U. Double‐click the component whose datasource
you wish to change, and click the ellipsis to choose a content item.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Component Rendering Parameters

Retrieve Rendering Parameters Using the API

Demo – Parameters
In the following demo, we will:
● Change the background color for the Trip Overview component from grey to red using rendering
parameters.

Open http://BasicSitecore in the Page Editor, and locate a page that displays the Trip Overview
component. Ensure that designing mode is enabled.

In Visual Studio’s Solution Explorer, open Trip Overview.ascx. Change the color for the Trip Overview
table from grey to red by modifying the HTML to include a red class. In order for an author to be able to
do this, this value needs to become a rendering parameter. Save and reload the browse to see the
change in color.

Switch back to the Page Editor, and click the Trip Overview component to select it.

In the floating toolbar, select More > Edit Page Editor Options.

In the Parameters field at the bottom of the dialog, add CssClass as a key, and red as a value. Click OK,
and save the page.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Switch to Visual Studio’s Solution Explorer, and open Trip Overview.ascx.cs.

In this file, retrieve the component’s rendering parameters as a string (use
((Sublayout)Parent).Parameters).

10. Convert the string to a NameValueCollection object using the
Sitecore.Web.WebUtil.ParseUrlParameters() method.
11. Extract the value of the CssClass key that you specified earlier, and set it to a public property.
12. Output that public property in Trip Overview.ascx in the following location:

13. Save.
14. Switch to the Page Editor and reload the page. Confirm that red is being output in the HTML source,
and that the Trip Overview now has a red background.

Where Should I Define Presentation and Datasources?

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Apply – Topic 5.1 – 40 min
Build a Featured Trip Component
In these labs you will build a reusable Featured Trip component that accepts a trip details datasource and
can be styled using parameters.

Lab A. Create Component and get the DataSource Item
1.

Create a sublayout named Featured Trip.

Paste the following sample HTML into the .ascx file. Alternatively, copy from Student Resources Folder
> WND Labs > Module 5 > Topic 5.1 > featured‐trip.html:

Explore Holland

An excellent tour of the country.

An excellent tour of the country.

Where indicated by comments in the HTML, use Sitecore controls to output the following fields:

Heading
Main Image
Main Content

Give each control an ID.

Set the Main Image max width to 280. MaxWidth is a property on the control.

Save the solution.

Using Sitecore Rocks, add the Featured Trip component to the maincontent placeholder on the Family
Holidays item, (in this case not in the standard values – you might not want the component to appear
every time you create a holiday).

Select the sublayout and open the Properties window. You can also open the Properties window by
pressing F4, or double‐clicking the component.

Set the DataSource property to any trip details item.

10. Save and preview the Family Holidays item, using Commandy.
11. Confirm that the component is outputting data from the context item. We have to explicitly tell the
controls to output data from the datasource.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

12. In the Page_Load method of the featured Featured Trip.ascx.cs file, get the component’s datasource
using the following code:

Code Sample – Datasource
var sublayout = Parent as Sublayout;
var datasource = sublayout.DataSource;

13. In the Featured Trip.ascx.cs file, set the .DataSource property of each control to the datasource item.
14. Click the Save button to publish the solution.
15. Preview the page and confirm that the content is now coming from the component’s datasource item
rather than the context item.

Lab B. Retrieve the CssClass Parameter Value
1.

Using Sitecore Rocks, navigate to the Family Holidays page where you added the Featured Trip
component.

In the Design Layout pane, double‐click the Featured Trip component to open its Properties.

Click the Ellipses ( . . . ) button next to the Parameters property.

Add a property called CssClass and give it a value of red. You will be injecting this value in the Featured
Trip component’s HTML.

In Featured Trip.ascx.cs, get the component parameters as a string (use
((Sublayout)Parent).Parameters).

Convert the string to a NameValueCollection object using the
Sitecore.Web.WebUtil.ParseUrlParameters() method.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum
7.

Website Development for.Net Developer

Extract the value of the CssClass key that you specified earlier and set it to a public property within
your class:

Code Sample – Public Property
public string CssClass
{
get;
set;
}

Output that public property in Featured Trip.ascx in the following location:

Code Sample – Output Public Property
div class='indentedSection <%= CssClass %>'>

Save the solution.

10. Browse to the Family Holidays page and confirm that the indentedSection has an additional class that is
being pulled from your component’s parameters.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Layout Deltas
Introduction
Objectives
By the end of this topic you will be able to:
●

Define the purpose of a layout delta.

Content
What Are Layout Deltas?

A Layout Delta Is Like a Transform

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

The RenderLayout in the Request

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Real World Solutions
Contents:




© Sitecore 2014

Familiar Concepts
Dealing with Larger Sites
Sitecore Query

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Familiar Concepts
Introduction
Objectives
By the end of this topic you will be able to:
 Describe a realistic Sitecore project setup.
 Describe a realistic content tree.
 Describe realistic data template and presentation configurations.
 Create and configure a new device.

Content
Demo – Solution, Topology, and Templates
In the following demo, we will look at:

Traincore’s project structure.
Traincore’s Sitecore tree structure.

Visual Studio Projects
The Traincore project folder sits outside the web root (more on the pros and cons of working inside the web root
in Module 9).

The core of the application lives in Training (Training.csproj).
Like all ASP.NET projects, common or shared functionality has been abstracted into three
additional projects:
o Training.Utilities
o Training.Controls
o Sitecore.Utilities (can be re‐used with any Sitecore project)
Visual Studio publishing profiles are used to move files from the project into the Sitecore web
root. Right‐click in the toolbar and select Web One Click Publish to enable the publish profile
dropdown.

References
Referenced .dlls are stored in a Libraries folder in the project root. Note that Copy Local is set to false, in case
you install Traincore into a different version of Sitecore than the referenced .dll. You could set up a local NuGet
server within your company and store different versions of the Sitecore .dlls there.

Configuration
In the Visual Studio project, there are a number of smaller configuration files inside /App_Config/Include – such
as BaseCore.Sites.config or BaseCore.Search.config. These patch changes into the web.config, so you can avoid
keeping track of changes to web.config, which is already huge.
Browse to http://traincore/sitecore/admin/ShowConfig.aspx. This page allows you to see the final patched
web.config. (More on this subject in Module 9.)

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Sitecore Content
Log into the Content Editor and expand Traincore’s main site tree: /sitecore/content/sitecore‐cycling‐holidays.

There are two sites in this installation:
Sitecore‐cycling‐holidays
Sitecore‐cycling‐holidays‐corporate
We will cover multi‐site implementations in a later topic.








Home is the site root. Traincore has several other non‐website folders including Global under:
sitecore‐cycling‐holidays.
Global contains small chunks of reusable content that are used as datasources by components,
such as gallery slides and ‘General Widget’ content (under: /Global/resusable content).
Global also contains the entire site’s navigation as a tree structure under: /Global/navigation.
Bookings is a bucket of unstructured holiday booking items. (More in this in Module 8). This is a
sample site, and it is unlikely that you would build your own e‐commerce system in Sitecore so
consider products such as uCommerce for Sitecore.
The Settings item under: /sitecore/Content is for content that is shared across all sites such as
rendering parameter options (more on this in Module 7).Most of this content uses shared
fields, which means the content is identical across versions and languages.
Traincore’s templates inherit multiple, smaller base templates – there isn’t a single ‘base’. This
is because certain pages, such as the home page, do not require a ‘Heading’ or ‘Main Content’
field. We recommend that you avoid redundant fields that don’t output anything.

Tip
Traincore defines main and footer navigation in a separate folder under: /Global rather than generating it
from the site structure. This is a much more inexpensive query; it allows you to include external link
items and makes it easy to see at a glance what the site’s navigation is going to look like.

Recommended Practices
All item fields should have an effect. An author should not fill in and publish a field without seeing a
result. This makes the site appear broken.

Recommended Practices

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Draw It
The training site has a lot of nested components, both statically and dynamically defined:

Containers with placeholders that divide pages into horizontal slices.
Columns including one‐column, two‐column, and three‐column functional components.

Demo – Presentation Configuration
In the following demo, we will look at:

Presentation details of various items and particularly how sublayouts are nested.
Which components accept datasources.
Which components make use of rendering parameters.

Using Visual Studio, expand the layouts folder. Note the number and variety of sublayouts.

Open /layouts/BaseCore/containers/ and /layouts/BaseCore/columns. There are many more placeholders
in this solution than the BasicSitecore solution from Modules 1 – 5. This is because Traincore makes use
of sublayout nesting to build up a variety of page designs.

Important
You can only use one instance of a placeholder on a page. For example, if you have used the Gallery
Container (which defines the GalleryContainer key), you cannot add an additional Gallery Container
because you cannot target its placeholder a second time.
3.

Log into http://traincore/, and select the Page Editor interface.

Directly under Home, create a new page of the type Standard Content and name it Favorite Bikes.

Ensure that design mode is enabled on the View tab.

The page is divided into containers. By default, Standard Content items have a Header, Page, and
Widgets container. Insert a new Gallery Container component.

Into the gallerycontainer placeholder, insert a Banner component – choose a datasource when
prompted. Note that the selection tree starts under the galleries item, and that incompatible items are
greyed out. More on this in Module 7.

Select the Widgets Container component, and move it above the Page and Gallery containers. Splitting
a page into containers allows for design flexibility.

Insert a new General Widget into the widgetcontainer placeholder and select a datasource for it.

10. Click More > Edit Component Properties, and change some of the values, such as Class and Widget
Width. Using rendering parameters allows you to apply many different styles to the same component.
Although the Standard Content data template has a default presentation, we can completely change the look
and feel using a hierarchy of nested components.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Placeholder Nesting and Component Re‐use

Supporting the Page Editor

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Demo – Create a Mobile Site
In the following demo, we will:






Create a mobile device
Create and assign a simple Mobile layout to a holiday item’s Mobile device
Output Page Heading and Page Content in the layout
Add a number of existing components (also used by the Default device) to the Mobile
layout’s placeholder.

Using Sitecore Explorer, open Traincore and create a new device named Mobile under:
/Traincore/master/sitecore/Layout/Devices.

View the presentation details of any item and note that Mobile now appears as a device option in the
Device Manager.

Using Solution Explorer, create a new layout called Mobile. You will be prompted to create a layout
definition item in Sitecore.

Use Sitecore controls to output the Page Heading and Page Content fields inside the .aspx. In this
example, we will not be using any styles.

Add a placeholder control to the bottom of the page and name its key widgets.

Save and deploy the solution.

Assign the new layout to the Battle of the Hills item (under: /sitecore/content/Home/sitecore‐cycling‐
holidays/holidays/battle‐of‐the‐hills) on the Mobile device. Add a number of widgets to the Widgets
placeholder.

Open the Battle of the Hills item in Page Editor. Use the Experience tab to change the device between
Default and Mobile. Note that the content being displayed is the same as the content used by the
Default device.

Recommended Practices
There are three main approaches to Sitecore and mobile:

Standard Responsive Design
Use the responsive design by itself, without using any Sitecore devices at all. Sitecore will not interfere.
This means little extra work for back‐end developers, and gives the responsibility to the front‐end
developers.
However, ignoring devices means that you cannot personalize content based on device, and large pages
with many components may not look as good. You will also need to test all combinations of components
that an author might use.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Devices
You can either create an entirely separate set of presentation details for your mobile device or use the
same presentation details in a different configuration, and rely on responsive design for formatting.
The first approach allows you to use the same content, but completely different components or CSS to
style shared components. While this allows you to target mobile devices specifically, you may find that
you need to maintain two sets of components and/or stylesheets.
The benefits of the second approach are that while you are relying on responsive design to format your
site based on screen size, you can choose to use more or less components, and use them in a slightly
different order. Responsive design is still responsible for the appearance of your site, but you can cut out
excessive components to improve the experience.

Separate Site
Finally, if it suits your requirements, you can create an entirely separate mobile site (much like sitecore‐
cycling‐holidays‐corporate) with separate content.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Apply – Topic 6.1 – 60 min
In this set of labs, you will create a news article page from a design and specification supplied by Sitecore
Cycling Holidays.

Sitecore Cycling Holidays is building a news section and have asked you to work on the
news article template. News items are going to be created under the news listing:
http://traincore/news.
The current news section uses standard content pages: http://traincore/news/our‐plans‐
for‐the‐new‐year.
The news article page will look similar to the standard content page, but with a news‐
specific feature – related articles.

News Article Page

Create a News Article Data Template and Standard Values
In the following labs you will:






Create a News Article data template, configure its base templates and add a number of
additional fields.
Create the News Article template’s standard values.
Configure News Article as an insert option on News Listing.
Create and populate a number of items based on the News Article template.

Lab A. Create a News Article data template
1.

Using Sitecore Rocks, create a new data template called News Article under:
/sitecore/templates/BaseCore/Pages.

Knowledge Check
A news article page requires common fields such as Page Heading and Meta Description. Given that this
is a functioning site and these fields have already been defined in a base template, how would you add
them to the News Article template you have just created?

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum
2.

Website Development for.Net Developer

Select the following base templates: Base Page, Base Page Content, and Base Page Summary Image.

Tip
Rather than finding commands using menus, you can right‐click and select the Commandy option, or
press the CTRL=SHIFT=SPACE keys on the keyboard to bring up the Commandy toolbar. Commandy
allows you to search for your command by name (for example, Browse or Page Editor) and execute it in
the context you are in (for example, with a particular item selected).
3.

Add an additional field under a field section called Article:
Field Name

Article
Related Articles

Knowledge Check
Why should you inherit from base templates rather than repeat fields on individual templates?

Set the source of the Related Articles field to the path of the News Listing content item in the tree
(/sitecore/content/sitecore‐cycling‐holidays/Home/news). This allows us to choose from the news item’s
children in the Related Articles multi‐list.

Set the template icon to the News Add icon (search for or type Network/16x16/news_add.png).

Lab B. Create the News Article standard values, assign insert options, and create an article
1.

Create the News Article template’s standard values.

On the template’s standard values, check that the $name token appears in Page Title, Page Heading,
and Navigation Title.

Navigate to the News Listing template’s standard values and set News Article as an insert option.

Using Sitecore Rocks, create several new items based on the News Article template under:
/sitecore/content/sitecore‐cycling‐holidays/home/news.

Tip
Use the ‘create multiple items’ functionality in Sitecore Rocks. In the bottom left‐hand corner of the Add
New Item dialog, increase the number of items to create from 1 to 5 or more:

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Populate each item with sample content. For each article item, select two or more related articles in the
Related Articles Multi‐list.

The following will appear at the top of each news article item:

In
Sitecore, workflow is a highly configurable approval process that items go through before they appear
on the live site (for example, to make sure that news articles that have not been approved by the news
team do not appear on the site).
7.

To approve the news article, click the Home tab, then click the arrow next to the Edit button > Click the
Submit option as detailed below. We will cover workflow in more detail in Module 9.

Smart publish the database and then browse to the news page to make sure that your new items are
being displayed in the news list.

Knowledge Check
Click on the link to your news item. You should see an empty page. Why can’t you see the ‘The layout for
the requested document was not found’?

Create a Component and Bind it to the Placeholder
In the following labs you will:

Add the Two‐Column sublayout to the News Article’s standard values.
Create a sublayout to output the contents of the Related Articles field.
Bind your sublayout to a placeholder.

Lab A. Create a Related Articles Sublayout
1.

Using Visual Studio Solution Explorer, right‐click the /layouts/BaseCore/content/ folder and select the
Add > New Item… option. Insert a new sublayout called Related Articles.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Use the Sitecore section to insert a sublayout and name it Related Articles.

When prompted by Sitecore Rocks, add the corresponding sublayout definition item to
/Traincore/master/sitecore/ /layout/Sublayouts/BaseCore/Content/.

Tip
If you are not prompted to add a sublayout definition item, your project might not be connected to a
Sitecore instance. Right‐click the project, select the Sitecore>Connect… option and pick the Sitecore
instance that you want to use.
4.

A sample repeater has been provided in the student resources folder (WND Labs > Module 6 > Topic 6.1 >
Lab C > Code > Related Articles.ascx). Copy and paste this code into your .ascx and then save.
Do not overwrite the entire file because the sample only contains the code for the repeater.
Navigate to the News Article template’s standard values and open the Design Layout pane.
Copy presentation details from standard values when prompted.

Copy from standard
values

Presentation details from
standard values

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum
7.

Website Development for.Net Developer

Add the 2 following sublayouts, and assign them to the placeholder keys as shown in the following table.
Two Column Content is a pre‐existing sublayout.
Rendering name

Two‐Column Content

Related Articles

Save the solution.

Because we are working outside the web root, we need to deploy the changed files. To deploy, right‐
click on the Visual Studio toolbar and select Web One Click Publish. Depending on your setup, this may
already be checked.

10. A publish toolbar will appear. Do not confuse this with Sitecore publishing!

11. Select the Traincore profile, and click the globe icon to deploy your files. This profile is set up as part of
the Traincore installation process. If there aren’t profiles available, please notify your instructor.

Knowledge Check
When you use a Sitecore control and specify a field – for example:
, what item does the control default to as its data source?

Lab B. Output a List of Related Articles
1.

Using Visual Studio, open Related Articles.ascx.cs.

Knowledge Check
Look in the Sitecore.Data.Fields class. Which field object type would be most suitable for retrieving the
Related Articles field from the context item?

In the Page_Load method, retrieve the Related Articles field on the context item as a MultilistField
object.
Use the GetItems() method on the MultilistField object to retrieve a list of selected items. These items
represent related articles you chose on each article.

Knowledge Check
What would the .Value property of the Related Articles field object contain?

Knowledge Check
Why wouldn’t you use FieldRenderer.Render to output the contents of a multi‐list field?

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum
4.
5.

Website Development for.Net Developer

Bind the list of items to the repeater.
The sample repeater’s prompts you to add a Sitecore control. Replace [SITECORE
CONTROL] with a Sitecore text control that outputs the Page Heading field.

[SITECORE CONTROL]

Because the control is in a repeater, we want to tell it to retrieve the Page Heading from each repeater
item and not from the context item. To do this, set the text control’s DataSource property to the item’s
ID. (Note the use of the <%#: Item.ID %> syntax because the repeater is strongly‐typed; Item represents
an object of type Sitecore.Data.Items.Item):

Code Sample
DataSource="<%#: Item.ID %>"

The sample repeater also prompts you to add a URL. Replace [URL HERE] with a method that retrieves
the SEO‐friendly URL. (Hint: refer to Module 4 if you are unsure of which method to use).

Save and deploy the solution.
Preview a news article page. The component in the right‐hand column now displays a list of live links to
the related articles specified in the Related Articles Multi‐list.

News Article Page

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Dealing with Larger Sites
Introduction
Objectives
By the end of this topic you will be able to:







List three considerations that must be taken into account when architecting a multi‐language
site.
Name four language configurations and what they do.
Account for items without versions.
Configure a multi‐site solution in web.config.
List the limitations of a multi‐site solution.

Content
Multi‐Language Support

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Demo – Multi‐site
In the following demo, we will:

Look at the configuration for multi‐site, and add http://traincore‐corporate/ .
Create an item clone.

Using the Sitecore Rocks, expand the /sitecore/content item in Traincore and look at the two sites –
sitecore‐cycling‐holidays and sitecore‐cycling‐holidays‐corporate.

Preview the Home item of each site. They use the same presentation details in different configurations,
and the corporate site is significantly smaller.

Content is independent, but presentation and data templates are shared. Both sites have
exactly the same functionality.
You could have two entirely different sites stored in the same implementation (for example, a
mobile‐specific site, taking advantage of devices).

In the Solution Explorer, open App_Config/Include/BaseCore.Sites.config. Note the presence of two
nodes. Note that the site host name, language, start path and start item differs between sites.

Browse to /sitecore/admin/ShowConfig.aspx to see the final, transformed configuration file. Locate the
nodes again – they are merged into the main configuration section.

Open IIS and select Traincore. Add traincore‐corporate to the site’s bindings, and make sure it is
included in your hosts file.

Browse to http://traincore‐corporate to see the live site.

You can share content between sites using cloning. In the Content Editor, Select the terms‐and‐
conditions item under /sitecore‐cycling‐holidays/Home. You can do this in Sitecore Rocks as well, but this
task tends to be performed by authors.

Select the item, and click the Home tab > Duplicate drop‐down > Clone:

Choose /sitecore‐cycling‐holidays‐corporate/Home as the item’s new parent. Note that the cloned
item’s name is greyed out.

10. Make a change to the clone’s Page Heading field.
11. Go back to the original item and make a change to the Page Heading of this item.
12. Go back to the clone. It has picked up on the change to the parent, and offers tree choices:

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Important
Because the corporate site is very small and receives very little traffic, it uses the same application pool
as the main site. Note that multiple sites using multiple application pools have licensing implications.

Recommended Practices
A multi‐site installation is not always appropriate. For example:
The more discrepancies there are between sites in the same installation the larger and more complex the
codebase becomes and the more convoluted the Sitecore configuration becomes.
When all sites use the same application pool, the performance of one affects all of the others.
Sitecore Cycling Holidays works as a multi‐site solution because the sites share exactly the same
functionality. You would not mix a holiday booking site and a retail site with nothing in common.

© Sitecore 2014

Dictionary Domains
http://www.sitecore.net/Community/Technical‐Blogs/John‐West‐Sitecore‐
Blog/Posts/2012/11/Sitecore‐ASPNET‐CMS‐6‐6‐Features‐Dictionary‐Domains.aspx
Re‐using and Sharing Data
http://sdn.sitecore.net/upload/sitecore7/70/reusing_and_sharing_data_sc70‐a4.pdf

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Sitecore Query
Introduction
By the end of this topic you will be able to:

Write simple Sitecore queries using a variety of operators and functions.
Write Sitecore queries that use axes.
Discuss appropriate uses of Sitecore query and when to opt for the search API.

Content
Demo ‐ Sitecore Query
In the following demo, we will:

Perform various queries on the Traincore tree using the XPath Builder in Sitecore Rocks.

Using Sitecore Rocks, open the XPath Builder by right‐clicking anywhere in your tree and selecting Tools
> XPath Builder.
Experiment with various queries (examples below). Use /sitecore/content as your Context Node:
Absolute query
/sitecore/content/#sitecore‐cycling‐holidays#/*
Relative query
.//*[@@templatename='Bike']
Filter by template
/sitecore/content/#sitecore‐cycling‐holidays#//*[@@templatename='Bike']
Filter by content
/sitecore/content/#sitecore‐cycling‐holidays#//*[@#Page Title# = 'News']
Return at index
/sitecore/content/#sitecore‐cycling‐holidays#/*[3]
ancestor‐or‐self::*
/sitecore/content/#sitecore‐cycling‐holidays#/ancestor‐or‐self::*
ancestor‐or‐self::[@@...]
/sitecore/content/#sitecore‐cycling‐holidays#/Home/holidays/#battle‐of‐the‐hills#/ancestor‐or‐
self::*[@@templatename='Holidays']
./ancestor‐or‐self::*[@@templatename='Holidays'] (Context node: /sitecore/content/sitecore‐cycling‐
holidays/Home/holidays/battle‐of‐the‐hills)
Parent
/sitecore/content/ #sitecore‐cycling‐holidays#/parent::*/child::*
Following
/sitecore/content//*[@@name='sitecore‐cycling‐holidays']/following::*

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Using Sitecore Rocks, navigate to the Holiday data template and look at the Terrain field. Note the
presence of an ancestor‐or‐self query that returns all values relevant to the context site.

Go to an item based on the Holiday data template – the selection is restricted by the query.








Queries are useful in a multi‐site environment when you need to get items without using a
path or GUID.
Queries can be expensive – We do not recommend using queries in a high traffic environment.
Don’t query the entire content tree.
Note that when you use complex queries it may affect performance.
The result set will be limited by the Query.MaxItems setting in the web.config.
You have to sort the results when you return them.

Query Syntax
Specific path

query:/sitecore/content/home/

Gets all immediate items under home
Note: Use if there is only one location, for example: /settings and when settings is shared by all sites
Cannot be used in a multi‐site.
*
wildcard

query:/sitecore/content/*/news

Gets items under content/[anything] called news
/
children

query:/sitecore/content/home/*

Gets all children of home
/ followed by GUID, item name, or *
//
descendants

query:/sitecore/content//*[@@templatename='News']

Gets all items that have home as ancestor and have News as the template name
// followed by GUID, item name, or *
Note: Can be expensive if the tree is large
© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum
@@
XML attribute

Website Development for.Net Developer
query:/sitecore/content/[@@templatename='News Listing']

Gets all items under /home that use the News template
e.g. @@templatename or @@templateid
Note: Case sensitive
@
field

query:/sitecore/content/*[@#Page Title# = 'Home']

Gets any items under /home that have a field called Page Title and field value of News
Note: Use # to escape spaces and hyphens in field names
.
context item
In the case of a source field, it’s the item you are currently viewing in the content tree
[1]
index

query:/sitecore/content/*[3]

Returns the item under home at index 3
Note: It’s not a zero‐based index

Uses for Sitecore Query

Tip
For more information on Treelist Parameters, see p12:
http://sdn.sitecore.net/upload/sitecore6/datadefinitioncookbook‐a4.pdf

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Apply – Topic 6.3 – 10 min
Sitecore Query in Datasources
Set Related Articles Source
To ensure that the correct items are picked in a list field, restrict the selection to a particular location and/or
template type. This is particularly important in multi‐site installations, where each site might have
individual locations for list content.

Use Sitecore Rocks to open /master/sitecore/content/templates/BaseCore/Pages/News Article.
In the far‐right text field, next to the Build button, build a query that satisfies the following conditions:

The items must have the template News Article.
The items must appear under the same parent as each other (NOT all items in the tree based on
the News Listing item. For example, if there are 10 articles in your tree in the tree, your query
should only return the News Article items that are siblings of the one you are currently looking
at) ( Hint: you are looking for any item whose ancestor‐or‐self:: has a type of News Listing).

© Sitecore 2014

Fast Query
http://sdn.sitecore.net/upload/sdn5/developer/using%20sitecore%20fast%20query/using%20sit
ecore%20fast%20query001.pdf
http://www.sitecore.net/unitedkingdom/Community/Technical‐Blogs/John‐West‐Sitecore‐
Blog/Posts/2012/05/Sitecore‐Query‐Cheat‐Sheet.aspx
Parameterized Datasources
http://sdn.sitecore.net/upload/sitecore6/datadefinitioncookbook‐a4.pdf (Search: “Treelist
Parameters”)

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Configuring the Page Editor
Contents:





© Sitecore 2014

Datasource Restrictions
Parameters and Parameter Templates
Placeholders Restrictions
Advanced Page Editor Configuration

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Datasource Restrictions
Introduction
Objectives
By the end of this topic you will be able to:

Restrict the type of item that can be selected as a datasource.
Restrict the location from which an item can be selected as a datasource.

Content
Datasource Location and Template Restrictions

Tip
An item can be selected from anywhere in the tree, so location restrictions do not apply. If you restrict
only the datasource template, then items that are not selectable will be ghosted (greyed out), and
authors will not be able to select them.
The Select the Associated Content dialog will not pop up automatically, but it can be accessed via the
Select Associated Content button in that component’s floating toolbar in the Page Editor.

Demo – Apply Restrictions
In the following demo, we will:
 Apply datasource restrictions using the Page Editor.
 View datasource restrictions in Sitecore Rocks.

Open the Page Editor, and ensure that the design mode is enabled.

Select the General Widget component and select More > Edit Page Editor Options in the floating
toolbar.

Click Insert Link above the Datasource Location field and select /sitecore/content/sitecore‐cycling‐
holidays/Global/reusable content. Click OK.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Add a second General Widget component.

A prompt appears, asking you to “select associated content”. Select a datasource item, and click OK.

Select the same General Widget component, and select More > Edit Page Editor Options again.

This time, click Insert Links above the Datasource Template field and select
/sitecore/Layouts/Sublayouts/BaseCore/Global Content/General Widget.

Add another General Widget component to the page. Notice that you now have an option to Create
New Content when you are prompted to add a datasource. Items that do not match the selected data
template, such as the root reusable contents item, are greyed out.

Select Create New Content, give the new datasource a name, such as The Best Mountain Bikes, and click
OK.

10. Populate the content of the datasource inline, and Save the page.
11. Switch to Sitecore Rocks.
12. Navigate to the reusable content folder, and note that the datasource named The Best Mountain Bikes
was created behind the scenes.
13. Navigate to /sitecore/Layouts/Sublayouts/BaseCore/Global Content/General Widget. Notice that the
Datasource Location and Datasource Template are available in Sitecore Rocks as well.

Apply – Topic 7.1 – 25 min
Datasource Restrictions
In the following labs you will learn to use the Page Editor to restrict the location and type of items authors
can select as a datasource.

Set Datasource Location
1.

Log in to the Page Editor interface.

Ensure that you are in design mode.

Navigate to the Home page, and select any existing General Widget component.

In the floating toolbar, select More > Edit Page Editor Options.

Click the Insert Link button above the Datasource Location field.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum
6.

Website Development for.Net Developer

In the item browser dialog, locate and select: /sitecore/content/sitecore‐cycling‐holidays/Global/reusable
content, then click OK.

Add a Component
1.

Select Add New Component on the ribbon.

Add a new General Widget to the widgetscontainer placeholder.

The Select Associated Content dialog appears. Notice that the Create New Content tab is greyed out.
Select any item from that list and click OK.

Save the page.
Set Datasource Template

Select the General Widget component you just added to the page.

Select More > Edit Page Editor Options in the floating toolbar.

Set the Datasource Template field to point to /sitecore/templates/BaseCore/Global Content/General
Widget.
Add Another Component

Add another General Widget component to the widgetscontainer placeholder.

Notice that the Create New Content button is now available in the Select Associated Content dialog.
Click it, and give the new datasource a name,such as New Bikes Available. This creates a new Sitecore
item in the background.

Populate the General Widget inline, and Save the page.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Parameters and Parameter Templates
Introduction
Objectives
By the end of this topic you will be able to:

Create and assign a parameter template.
Describe the benefits to an author of using a parameter template.

Content
Demo – Using a Parameter Template
In the following demo, we will:
 Create and assign a parameter template using Sitecore Rocks.
 Show the result in the Page Editor.

In Sitecore Rocks, create a parameter template based on Standard Rendering Parameters. Name it
Related Articles Rendering Parameters.

Add a sample single‐line text field named CSS Class to the template.

Assign the rendering parameters to the Related Articles component.

Using the Page Editor, browse to one of the News Article items you created in Module 6. Select the
Related Articles component and select Edit the Component Properties.

Note the presence of the CSS Class field alongside Datasource and Placeholder.

Knowledge Check
What problems might you encounter if you do not use parameter templates, and allow authors to specify
parameter key/value pairs themselves?

Specify Parameters Using a Parameter Template

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Apply – Topic 7.2 – 50 min
Parameter Templates
In the following labs you will:






Create a parameter template.
Assign a parameter template to a component.
Use the Page Editor to set parameters on a component.
Output the contents of the parameter field.

Create and Assign Parameter Template
1.

Using Sitecore Rocks, navigate to: /master/sitecore/templates/BaseCore /Layouts/Rendering Parameters
and create a new rendering parameters template.

Right‐click and select the Insert a New Template… option.

Name the new template Related Articles Rendering Parameters.

Set the base template to Standard Rendering Parameters.

Name the first section Styles and create a field called Class of the type Droplink and the source
/sitecore/content/settings/styles/widgets.

Knowledge Check
Given that you will probably have a limited set of CSS classes that you want to re‐use across the site,
what might be a good choice for field versioning?

Navigate to the Related Articles sublayout that you created in Module 6:
/master/sitecore/layout/Sublayouts/BaseCore/Content/Related Articles.

Find the Parameters Template field in the Editor Options field section, and click the Browse… button.

Locate and select the Related Articles Rendering Parameters template that you created in step 2.

Save the sublayout.

10. Using the Page Editor, navigate to one of the news article that you created earlier.
Select the Related Article component and in the floating toolbar and click the More button and then the
Edit the Component Properties option.

11. Confirm that the Class field now appears in the Component Properties window.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

12. Select red from the Class drop‐down list and click OK and Save.

Use Parameters in Code
1.

Using Visual Studio, navigate to the Related Article sublayout and open the .cs file. Refer to Module 5
for code samples.

Retrieve the sublayout parameters.

Return the Class parameter.

The parameter template you created earlier defined “Class” as a droplink. The value of the Class
parameter is going to be a Sitecore ID as a string.

Convert this string to a SitecoreID and use it to retrieve the
referenced item.

The referenced item has a field named CSS Classes. Retrieve the raw
value of this field as a string, and make it available as a public
property.

In the .ascx file, use code blocks to output the Class string (Be sure to leave a space).

Save and Deploy the Visual Studio solution.

Browse to the news article with the Related Article component and
confirm that this component now has the style specified in the
Parameter Template field.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Placeholder Restrictions
Introduction
Objectives
By the end of this topic you will be able to:

Describe the purpose of a placeholder settings item.
Explain what compatible renderings are.

Content
Placeholder Settings Items

Tip
To create a placeholder settings item, insert a new item under: /sitecore/Layouts/Placeholder Settings.
Make sure the Placeholder Key field is populate. We recommend that you use lowercase for the
placeoholder item name and key, because this makes it easier to identify as a placeholder in the
component hierarchy.

Tip
Use the WebEdit.PlaceholdersEditableWithoutSettings setting in web.config to make all placeholders
selectable even if they do not have a placeholder settings item.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Compatible Renderings and Allowed Controls

Demo – Allowed Controls and Compatible Renderings
In the following demo, we will:

Use the Compatible Renderings button.
Assign allowed controls.
Assign compatible renderings.

Compatible Renderings
1.

Open the Page Editor, and ensure design mode is enabled.

On the Home page, select the Gallery component. You may need to
click the blue arrow to navigate to the gallery component itself.
Notice the presence of an icon called Replace with compatible
rendering.

Select Banner when prompted, and save. Rather than a scrolling gallery with multiple images, you now
have a single image.

Replace the Banner component with the Gallery component again.

Select the Banner component again and, in the floating toolbar, click the blue arrow to navigate to the
components placeholder (gallerycontainer).

Allowed Controls
1.

In the Page Editor, browse to the news article you created earlier under: /sitecore/content/sitecore‐
cycling‐holidays/Home/news

Select the tworightcolumn placeholder, which is the narrow column within the Two‐Column Content
sublayout. Click the pencil icon in a square to edit the placeholder settings.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Knowledge Check
Why can’t authors add Related Articles to the placeholder?

Click Edit next to the Available Controls multi‐list, and add Related Articles to the right‐hand side. Click
OK.

Select the tworightcolumn placeholder again and click Add to here. Add Related Articles to the page.

Configuring Compatible Renderings
1.

Remain on the news article page, in the Page Editor interface. Select the Related Articles component
and select More > Edit Page Editor Options.

Scroll down to the Compatible Renderings field. Locate the Subnavigation component (the path is
/sitecore/layout/Renderings/BaseCore/Sub‐navigation). Double‐click the component to move it into the
right‐hand column, then click OK.

Select the Related Articles component. Notice that the compatible renderings button appears in the
floating toolbar. Click it, and select Subnavigation as a replacement for Related Articles.

Knowledge Check
If you select the Subnavigation component, why is there now a Compatible Renderings button?

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Advanced Page Editor Configuration
Introduction
Objectives
By the end of this topic you will be able to:

Create a custom experience button.
Create an edit frame.

Content
Walkthrough – Custom Experience Buttons
In the following walkthrough, we will:

Change an existing button on the floating toolbar for all components.
Add an additional custom experience button to the floating toolbar of the General
Widget component.

In the Page Editor, ensure design mode is enabled and select any component. Note the variety of
buttons that appear on the floating toolbar. Each of these buttons fires a command. These commands
are configured in the core database.

Switch to Sitecore Rocks. Open the core database and navigate to:
/sitecore/content/Applications/WebEdit/Default Rendering Buttons/Delete. Double‐click to open it. This is
where Sitecore’s default buttons live.

In the Editor pane, change the Tooltip field from “Remove component” to “Delete component”.

Switch back to the Page Editor. Refresh the page. Select the same component, and hover over the
Delete button. Note that the tooltip text has changed.

You can create your own buttons or use some of Sitecore pre‐existing ones. On the floating toolbar, click
More > Edit Page Editor Options.

In the Page Editor Buttons field, select a number of additional controls. Click OK, refresh the page, and
confirm that the new buttons appear.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum
7.

Website Development for.Net Developer

Switch back to Sitecore Rocks. The button you just selected comes from the Custom Experience
Buttons list in the core database. Navigate to: /sitecore/content/Applications/WebEdit/Custom Experience
Buttons. You can insert your own custom experience buttons here.

Custom Experience Buttons

Tip
Commands are listed in the /App_Config/Commands.config in the file system. They have a name and an
associated type, and inherit from: Sitecore.Shell.Applications.WebEdit.Commands.WebEditCommand.

Types and How to Assign Them

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Demo – Edit Frames
In the following walkthrough, we will:

Create a Field Editor button.
Insert an edit frame into the Holiday Summary widget.

Using Sitecore Rocks, navigate to: /core/sitecore/content/Applications/WebEdit/Edit Frame Buttons

Duplicate the Default folder and rename it to Holiday Summary.

Open the Holiday Summary item and change the Default Title field to Holiday Summary.

Delete all except the Edit item, which is based on the Field Editor Button template.

On the Edit item, change the Heading, Fields and Tooltip as follows.

Open the bascore‐widget‐holiday‐summary.ascx sublayout: /layouts/BaseCore/widgets/basecore‐
widget‐holiday‐summary.ascx.

Surround the entire definition list HTML (see code sample below) in the list with an .

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum
8.

Website Development for.Net Developer

Set the Buttons ID to the ID of the Holiday Summary folder item you created in the core database.

Code Sample – Edit Frame

Save and deploy the solution.

10. Switch to Page Editor mode and navigate to a holiday page, for example, Battle of the Hills.
11. Switch on Editing, but switch off Designing.
12. Click the whitespace within the holiday summary list. Your edit frame will appear around the content.
13. Click the command on the floating toolbar. Your fields will appear in a pop‐up window.

Apply – Topic 7.4 – 15 min
Edit Frame
Add an Edit Frame
1.

Using Sitecore Rocks, navigate to /core/sitecore/content/Applications/WebEdit/Edit Frame Buttons.

Duplicate the Default folder and rename it to Holiday Summary.

Open the Holiday Summary item and change the Default Title field to Holiday Summary.

Delete all except the Edit item, which is based on the Field Editor Button template.

Open the Edit item.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Change the Heading, Fields and Tooltip as follows.

Switch to Visual Studio.

Open the bascore‐widget‐holiday‐summary.ascx sublayout ‐ /layouts/BaseCore/widgets/basecore‐
widget‐holiday‐summary.ascx.

Surround the entire definition list HTML (see code sample below) with an .

10. Set the Buttons property to the path of the Holiday Summary folder item you created in the core
database.

Code Sample – Edit Frame

11. Save and deploy the solution.
12. Switch to Page Editor mode and navigate to a holiday page – for example, Battle of the Hills.
13. Switch on Editing, but switch off Designing.
14. Click the whitespace within the holiday summary list. Your edit frame will appear around the content.

15. Click the Cubes command in the floating toolbar.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

16. The Terrain field opens up in a pop‐up window.

Knowledge Check
If the DataSource property is not set, where will the edit frame try to retrieve the field values from?

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Dealing with Your Data
Contents:



© Sitecore 2014

Item Buckets
Search

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Item Buckets
Introduction
Objectives
By the end of this topic you will be able to:






Explain how buckets solve UI concerns in large implementations.
Create buckets and bucketable items.
Configure bucket settings and facets.
Use the buckets interface to search for and manage content.

Content
The Scenario

Walkthrough – Using Buckets as an Author
In the following demo, we will:








Use bucket to search for bookings.
Narrow down results using facets.
Edit and create items as normal.
Use plain‐text search to search for a widget we know exists, for example, which‐bike. Use
wildcards, replacements, and exact phrases.
Change the results view to Gallery or GUID view.
Replicate search mechanism in their code – query an index rather than a tree.

Using the Desktop interface, open the Content Editor.

Right‐click the quick action bar and select Item Bucket. This will highlight items in the tree that are
buckets.

Navigate to /sitecore/Content/sitecore‐cycling‐holidays/Bookings.

Click the Search tab and type * to show all results.

Type mar*ina to show that wildcards work as expected – you can also use “?” in place of the asterisk.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum
6.

Website Development for.Net Developer

Click a search result to open it. Duplicate it to make sure that the functionality is normal. Click the
Search button to refresh the search and the duplicated item should appear.
Note the list of filters in the right column on the screen. These are known as result facets (for example:
by default, Sitecore facets on Template Name and Language).

In our results list, we have a Holiday Booked facet that has been created especially for Traincore to
narrow down booking results by holiday package booked. Click the arrow on the left‐hand side of the
search box. Notice that search filters and bulk search operations become available to you:

What Is a Bucket?

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

When to Use a Bucket

Tip
To test functionality and performance, you can use the FillDB page found in the admin folder to quickly
create large amounts of test data, to test the buckets functionality with sample URL:
http://TrainCore/sitecore/admin/filldb.aspx

Demo – Buckets and Bucketable Items
In the following demo, we will:

Turn reusable content into a bucket.
Make General Widget items bucketable.
Change bucket settings.

In the Content Editor, select the Reusable Content item and click the Configure tab.

Click the Bucket button. The options in the Buckets chunk should have changed to Revert and Sync, and
a Search tab will appear in the content pane.

This item is now a bucket. If you want all items based on this template to be buckets, set it on standard
values.

Navigate to the standard values item of the data template. Click the Configure > Bucket option.

Create a new item based on this data template. The bucket icon should appear in the gutter next to it,
denoting that it is a bucket.

Enable standard fields, and scroll to the Item Buckets field section. Additional options include limiting
which views are allowed for the item (for example, Gallery View for image heavy items), or choosing to
maintain parent/child relationships when bucketing a pre‐existing sub‐tree of items.

Navigate to the reusable content item and try searching for *. Although you see results, if you expand
the reusable content item, its children all appear as normal items because the items have not been made
bucketable.

Select one of the children of the reusable content item. Notice the message at the top of the item:

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum
9.

Website Development for.Net Developer

Navigate to the item’s data template and create a standard values item if one does not exist.

10. On the data template’s standard values, find the Item Buckets field section, and select the Bucketable
checkbox.
11. Save the item and navigate back to the bucket.
12. Because you have made changes pertaining to the bucket‐ability of items in the reusable content
bucket, you must sync it. Note that you do not need to sync a bucket after making content changes.
On the Configure tab, click the Sync button. The bucket’s children disappear.
13. On the View tab, select the Buckets checkbox. Then expand the reusable content item. Note the items
are organized by creation time; your searches actually run against an index of these items.

Note
Any item can become a bucket; items in buckets should be bucketable. You can mix non‐bucketable items
in, but they will not behave in the same way.

Tip
You can make a particular template a bucket by default by selecting the template’s standard values and
clicking the Bucket command on the ribbon.

Creating a Bucket

Tip
To preserve the parent/child relationship, navigate to the standard values of the template of the item
that will act as the parent (for example: items based on the News Article template will be the parent to
items based on the Comment template.). Ensure standard fields are visible and select the Lock Child
Relationship checkbox.

Tip
Specify a Facet Filter class to facet on only certain items – for example: you may want to exclude some
languages.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Tip
To view the folder structure under a bucket, click View > Buckets option. This is configurable in
Sitecore.Buckets.config:

Making Items Bucketable

Demo – Configuring Facets
In the following demo, we will:

View a number of pre‐existing facets created by developers.

Using the Content Editor, navigate to: /System/Settings/Buckets/Facets.

Navigate to the File Type facet. The field is Extension.

Navigate to a media item in the Media Library; one of the fields is called Extension. This is a very simple
mapping between Sitecore field and index field.

Navigate to the Language facet. Note the Field Name field; this corresponds to a field in the index, not
in Sitecore. Notice that items do not have a language field, even in raw values. This is calculated and
entered into the index.
Developers can extend the facet list, but it is not as simple as faceting on any field without doing some
pre‐processing. How do you facet on a pipe‐delimited list of IDs?

Navigate to the Holiday Name facet. Notice that the field name here is computedholidayname. This is
another calculated field. When the indexer looks at Sitecore items, it looks at every item and sees if it
lives under a holiday item, then adds that holiday’s name to this custom field.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Apply – Topic 8.1 – 20 min
Create a Bucket and Make Items Bucketable
In the following labs, you will:

Turn items based on the News Listing template into buckets.
Make items based on the News Article template bucketable.

Turn the News Listing Template into a Bucket
1.

Using the Content Editor, navigate to the News Listing template:
/sitecore/templates/BaseCore/Pages/News Listing. Make sure that you are viewing standard fields.

Select the template’s standard values; then click the Configure tab > Buckets chunk > Bucket
command to turn it into a bucket.

Navigate back to an existing news listing in the content tree: /sitecore/content/sitecore‐cycling‐
holidays/Home/news.

Confirm that the item is now a bucket. The active commands in the Buckets chunk should be Revert and
Sync.

Knowledge Check
Expand the News item. Why are the news article items not hidden, even though the news item has been
turned into a bucket?

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Make the News Article Template Bucketable
1.

Using the Content Editor, navigate to the News Article template: /sitecore/templates/BaseCore
/Pages/News Article.

Select the template’s standard values (make sure you are viewing standard fields).

Navigate to the Item Buckets field section and select the Bucketable – Can be stored as an
unstructured item in an item bucket checkbox and save.

Because you have made a change to the template of an item that appears in a bucket, you must sync
existing buckets (the existing news item).

Select the existing news item in the content tree.

Confirm that all children (except our‐plans‐for‐the‐new‐year, which is based on the Standard Content
template) are hidden and that search and faceting work as expected.

© Sitecore 2014

Developer’s Guide to Item Buckets and Search
http://sdn.sitecore.net/Reference/Sitecore%207/Developers%20Guide%20to%20Item%20Buck
ets%20and%20Search.aspx

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Search
Introduction
Objectives
By the end of this topic you will be able to:






Search an index using a LINQ‐based search API.
Create a custom search result type.
Configure what goes into your indexes, and how they are stored.
Facet on a set of results.

Content
Simple Search

Demo – Executing a Simple Search
In the following demo, we will:

Build a simple search and return all indexed items.
Search by the item’s Name property (Sitecore property).
Search by item’s Heading (developer‐created property).

Drop the simple search code from the preceding slides into a sublayout code‐behind file.

Attach a break point and note that an IEnumerable is returned. This contains all indexed items.

Use .Where() to search for item’s whose name contains bike:

Code Sample – Sitecore Property
.Where(x => x.Name.Contains("bike"));

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum
4.

Website Development for.Net Developer

Use .Where() to search for the items whose main content field contains bike:

Code Sample – Developer‐Created Property
.Where(x => x["main_content"].Contains("bike"));

Use .Where() to search for items whose create date is within the date specified. (Note that .Between is a
Sitecore‐specific extension):

Code Sample – Using ‘Between’
.Where(x => x.CreatedDate.Between(new DateTime(2013, 06, 03), DateTime.Now, Inclusion.Both));

Basic Index Configuration

Tip
Use SwitchOnRebuildLuceneIndex or SwitchOnRebuildSolrIndex to avoid an index directory being
deleted while it is in the process of being rebuilt.
http://sdn.sitecore.net/upload/sitecore7/70/sitecore_search_and_indexing_guide_sc70‐a4.pdf

Tip
Lucene and Solr are search platforms. They are built on the same technology, and the one you choose
depends on your requirements. Lucene is best used for integrated, locally managed search, while Solr
offers a scalable, enterprise‐level solution.

Tip
Solr supports distributed indexing, but Lucene does not. This means the search indexes can be offloaded
to a separate server and then accessed by all CD servers.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Walkthrough – Index Viewer
In the following walkthrough, we will:

Use the Index Viewer on the Sitecore Desktop to rebuild the indexes.

Using the Sitecore Desktop, click Start > Control Panel > Indexing > Indexing Manage.
Click the Rebuild button.
More information
about each index
Default Sitecore
indexes

Notice that there is an additional option for Solr: by default, Sitecore defines three indexes – one per
database (Master, Core, and Web).
3.

Using the file system, navigate to the /Data/indexes folder. You will see one folder per index.

Alternatively, you can enable to Developer tab in the Content Editor and use the Rebuild Index button
there:

Tip
To view raw Lucene indexes, use a free open source tool called Luke: http://code.google.com/p/luke.
Luke can also be used on Content Delivery networks to view an index however it can take a write lock on
the indexes. Use this for viewing in read‐only mode. Also be careful if you are opening a large index on a
delivery environment because Luke will load it all into memory. Lastly Luke can open indexes created by
different versions of the Lucene library and even the indexes created by Solr.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Tip
.Filter() and .Where() both restrict the result list (and can be used in combination), but .Filter does not
affect the scoring/ranking of the search hits.

Custom Search Result Type

Tip
Sitecore provides a starting point for a search result item in:
Sitecore.ContentSearch.SearchTypes.SearchResultItem. Inheriting gives you properties like: .Template,
.Language, .ID, and so on.
The .Paths property on SearchResultItem lets you narrow your search by path in the Sitecore tree.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Tip
Some standard fields are already indexed and stored (see Advanced Configuration). If you want to add a
standard field as a property to your result item, use the properties in Sitecore.Search.BuiltinFields when
defining the IndexField. This way you can avoid having to remember standard field names.
Examples of supported search result property types
.NET built‐in floating‐point types

Sitecore Short ID

Demo – Paths, Pagination and Search Result Types
In the following demo, we will:







Create a custom search type called CustomSearchResult ‐ include a number of different
fields from base templates.
Inherit from Sitecore’s base SearchResultItem class.
Refactor search to query properties rather than strings.
Limit result set using .Paths.
Paginate results.

Create a custom search type called CustomSearchResult. Include a number of different fields from the
Base template, such as Page Heading.

Inherit from Sitecore’s base SearchResultItem class.

Fields with a space need the IndexField decoration, for example: [IndexField("page heading")].

Refactor simple search to use your new custom class. You will now be able to query by properties rather
than string fields.

Use .Paths property inherited from SearchResultItem to restrict the search location.

Use .Page() to paginate result set.

Returning a Result Set

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Tip – Advanced Use of Facets
For a more advanced example of how faces can be used, download the Autohaus demo from the Sitecore
Marketplace: https://marketplace.sitecore.net/en/Modules/Autohaus.aspx

Best Practice
When you output a list of results, you can iterate through the list of SearchHit object and use the values
in the .Document to avoid having to hit the database for item information. However, this will only work if
your field is stored rather than just indexed.

Tip ‐ Security
Huge improvements to security are being made in later updates to Sitecore 7. Until then, refer to Stack
Overflow for options: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16683487/indexing‐sitecore‐item‐security‐and‐
restricting‐returned‐search‐results.

Demo – GetResults() and Facets
In the following demo, we will:

Return the SearchResults object.
Set count, hits, and facets to variables and inspect.

Use the GetResults() method to return a results object rather than an IEnumerable.
Return facet categories, a list of total search results (regardless of pagination, this saves you from
having to do multiple queries), and a collection of hits.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Index Configuration

Which Fields Should Be Indexed?

Important
It is essential that you fine‐tune your index to include only the fields that you require. Many unnecessary
standard fields are excluded by default. As your solution scales, an index that has not been tuned will
become difficult to manage and take a long time to generate.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

How Should Fields Be Indexed?

Tip
The DefaultIndexConfiguration.config contains comments that explain what each attribute does and
what the options are (for example, indexType, vectorType).

Tip
You can index media items (and their contents in the case of PDFs) as well – see blog post for more
information:
http://www.sitecore.net/Community/Technical‐Blogs/John‐West‐Sitecore‐Blog/Posts/2013/04/Sitecore‐7‐
Indexing‐Media‐with‐IFilters.aspx

Store or Index?

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Computed Fields

Tip
You can also use Virtual Fields that evaluate on request. They are useful if you need to perform a
calculation on the fly rather than retrieve a stored value.

Tip
Sitecore ships with a tool that allows you to test the scalability of your search providers and the way your
indexes have been set up. For more information, see The Developer’s Guide to Item Buckets and Search
(previous topics Extend).

Apply – Topic 8.2 – 70 min
Refactor News Listing
Currently, we are outputting a list of news articles using the .GetDescendants() method. In the following
labs, you will:

Refactor the news listing code to retrieve data from an index using the search API.

Output News Articles Using Sitecore Search API
1.

In Visual Studio, open the basecore‐news‐listing.ascx.cs file (under
/layouts/BaseCore/content/basecore‐news‐listing.ascx.cs).

In order to take advantage of the search API, make sure you include the following namespaces:

Code Sample – Sitecore Property
using Sitecore.ContentSearch;
using Sitecore.ContentSearch.SearchTypes;
using Sitecore.ContentSearch.Linq;
3.

Using Visual Studio, create a new class called NewsResult. Either create it in /layouts/BaseCore or in a
new folder under BaseCore in the Training.Utilities project; this is your custom search result class.

Inherit from the Sitecore.ContentSearch.SearchTypes.SearchResultItem base class.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum
5.

Website Development for.Net Developer

Add the properties specified in the following table:
Property name

Property decoration

[IndexField("page heading")]

[IndexField("page summary")]

Use the code example below as a guide:

Code Sample – Search Class Property
[IndexField("meta description")]
public string MetaDescription { get; set; }

Tip
If you want to include a system field in your custom search result class, consider using the BuiltinFields
namespace to decorate the properties rather than typing the field name out as a string:
[IndexField(BuiltinFields.Version)]
string Version { get; set; }

Using Visual Studio, open the news listing sublayout code‐behind file (.cs).
Previously, news articles were retrieved using .GetDescendants(). In this refactor, we want to produce
exactly the same result by querying an index. A partially completed code sample has been provided in
the student resource folder (WND Labs > Module 8 > Topic 8.2 > Lab A > basecore‐news‐listing.ascx.cs).
We recommend that you refer back to the materials on how to construct a query.

Retrieve the web index – either by retrieving it by name (sitecore_web_index), or by using a
SitecoreIndexableItem. (This object is constructed by passing a Sitecore item in as a parameter). See the
code example below. For ease, retrieve the index by name.

Code Sample – Index by Name
Sitecore.ContentSearch.ContentSearchManager.GetIndex("sitecore_web_index");

Code Sample – SitecoreIndexableItem
SitecoreIndexableItem indexableItem = new SitecoreIndexableItem(item);

var index = Sitecore.ContentSearch.ContentSearchManager.GetIndex(item);

Create a search context from that index.

10. Use the GetQueryable() method on the search context object to retrieve an IQueryable.
11. Use LINQ statements to return only items that are descendants of the current news listing and are
based on the News Article template.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Sitecore API .Paths
To limit the section of the content tree that results are returned from, use the Paths property on the
base class; this will return only items that have a particular ID in their list of ancestors (for example,
Home would have the ID for the Content and sitecore items):
x.Paths.Contains(item.ID)

12. Order by the CreatedDate property (found on the SitecoreSearchResult base class).
13. At the end of the LINQ statement, use the GetResults() method to return a SearchResults object. This
should come after any .Where() and .OrderBy(). The following example shows a query with a single
.Where() using .GetResults():

Code Sample – Search Class Property
var query = context.GetQueryable()
.Where(x => x.Name == "Bikes")
.GetResults();
14. The SearchResults object has a property called .Hits. It is a collection of SearchHit objects, each of which
has a .Document property. The .Document property is a NewsResult object.
15. Select out a list of NewsResult objects:

Code Sample – Search Class Property
.GetResults();results.Hits.Select(x => x.Document)
16. Bind results to a repeater, delete the existing repeater and use the sample provided in the student
resource folder (WND Labs > Module 8 > Topic 8.2 > Lab B > basecore‐news‐listing.ascx).
17. Make sure you change the ItemType attribute on the repeater to your custom results class.
18. Use the format in the file to output properties of your objects. Notice the colon after the # symbol. All
data should come from the index; you should not need to retrieve the item from Sitecore – including
the .URL property.

Important
As of Update‐2, the .URL property requires some modification. Ask your instructor for more information.

Knowledge Check
At this point, all properties that are retrieving not standard fields will be blank. Why is this? Hint: think
about the storage type configuration.

19. In the Visual Studio solution, open /App_Config/Include/Basecore/Basecore.Search.config.
20. In the raw:AddFieldByFieldName section, ensure that Page Heading, and Page Summary are listed.
21. Make sure the storageType attribute is set to YES.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

22. In the Content Editor, use the Developer tab to rebuild the web index. (If you have any unpublished
news articles, make sure you publish these items first. Otherwise, they will not be added to the web
index).
23. Save and deploy the solution.
24. Navigate to the News Listing page on the site and confirm that news articles are being output in date
order.

Tip
If you are seeing more than one version of an item, it might be because you have more than one language
version of each specified. Narrow it down by adding a .Where() to your query that only returns items from
the context language (ordinarily found in the Regional ISO Code field on the language definition item, but
for the purposes of this exercise you can use the item name to save time).

Extend





© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Search and Indexing Guide
http://sdn.sitecore.net/Reference/Sitecore%207/Sitecore%20Search%20and%20Indexing%20G
uide.aspx
Search Scaling Guide
http://sdn.sitecore.net/Reference/Sitecore%207/Sitecore%20Search%20and%20CMS%20Scali
ng%20Guide.aspx
Sitecore 7 Development Team Blog
http://www.sitecore.net/Community/Technical‐Blogs/Sitecore‐7‐Development‐Team.aspx
Sitecore 7 Hangouts
http://www.youtube.com/user/SitecorePM

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Recommended Practices
Contents:









© Sitecore 2014

Working with Media
Caching and Performance
Publishing
Installing and Scaling Sitecore
Team Development and the Development Environment
How to Deal with Deployment
Basic Security
Workflow

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Working with Media
Introduction
Objectives
By the end of this topic you will be able to:

Understand how media gets stored.
Define what settings can be changed in the Web.Config relating to media items.
Describe how to change media extensions from .ashx to the true file ending.

Content
Storing Media

Tip
There is a file upload folder on in the website folder. If you enable this folder in the web.config, it will
monitor media items dropped there. If files do get added, then they appear in the media library. Keep in
mind when you deploy your solution that if you are storing media files on the file system, they need to be
replicated to your new environment. We recommend that you store media in the database for that
reason. However, it is useful for storing large files (video library) on disk because that way you don’t bloat
the database and the media database files (MDF) remain lean. Storing media in the database sometimes
can be inefficient and, depending on the size, might actually hurt performance.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

File Extensions

Walkthrough – Changing File Extensions
In the following walkthrough, we will:


1.
2.
3.
4.

Change the file extension in configuration.

Go to Traincore.
Inspect the element for an image ‐ .ashx
Change the Media.RequestExtension value in the web.config.
Inspect the element again. The true extension is revealed.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Caching and Performance
Introduction
Objectives
By the end of this topic you will be able to:









List the item cache layers.
Name an action that clears HTML cache.
Discuss prefetch cache.
Discuss where you can clear all caches.
State where cache settings are defined.
Describe various caching options.
Explain the purpose of Profile and Debug mode in the Page Editor.

Content
Item Cache

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Tip
HTML caching is defined on individual components. This is another reason to make sure you
componentize your page.
Caching by parameters/user/data means that a version of your component can be cached unless those
parameters change. You might want to cache a component for all users in the US, but cache is different
HTML for UK users. Alternatively, if your component accepts various datasources, you can cache that
component with its different datasource, which is then added to the index of the cache. Then when the
component is requested again, it is pulled from the cache with its relevant datasource.

Important
If you have a separate site in the web.config, make sure the name of the site is listed as a site in the
HtmlCacheClearer event handler in the web.config:

Walkthrough – Clearing Cache
In the following walkthrough, we will:

Navigate to http://traincore/sitecore/admin/cache.aspx.
Notice maximum cache sizes are listed in the right‐hand column.
Demonstrate that caches can be cleared using the Clear All button.

Set up HTML cache for a component
1.

Navigate to http://traincore/sitecore/admin/cache.aspx.

Notice that maximum cache sizes are listed in the column on the right side of the window.

Demonstrate that caches can be cleared using the Clear all button.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Cache Tuning and Configuration

Tip
See cache reference guide for more information:
http://sdn.sitecore.net/Reference/Sitecore%206/Cache%20Configuration%20Reference.aspx

Tip
Sitecore Rocks caches interface – using Sitecore Rocks, right‐click on an instance and in Commandy,
type cache. You get a handy interface for viewing and configuring different cache settings. For a mini
tutorial see: http://www.sitecore.net/Community/Technical‐Blogs/Trevor‐Campbell/Posts/2013/02/28‐
Days‐of‐Sitecore‐Rocks‐Manage‐Part‐3.aspx

Demo – Various Cache Settings
In the following demo, we will:

Look at the various cache settings available in the web.config.
Look at various cache interfaces.

Look at the various cache settings in the web.config:
 Default settings
 Cache sizes specified in the section
 Cache sizes specified on the nodes or below the section
Look at various cache configuration files in /App_Config/Prefetch.
Look at the statistics page.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Profiling and Debugging

Tip
Experience CMS Performance Tuning Guide:
http://sdn.sitecore.net/Reference/Sitecore%207/CMS%20Performance%20Tuning%20Guide.aspx
Experience CMS Diagnostics Guide:
http://sdn.sitecore.net/Reference/Sitecore%207/CMS%20Diagnostics%20Guide.aspx

Walkthrough – Use Profiler and Debugger
In the following walkthrough, we will:





1.

Look at debug mode.
Enable and disable profiling and tracing.
Look at the profile table and trace.
Visit /sitecore/admin/stats.aspx.

Log in to the Sitecore Desktop and start the site in debug mode by clicking Sitecore > Debug.
Note that the ribbon at the top of the page allows you to enable/disable profiling and tracing:

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Debug mode allows you to see the profile, cache settings and output of individual components (Yet
another reason to split your page into components that can be easily isolated and profiled):

The information about individual components is summarized in the profile table at the bottom of the
page.

The bottom of the page also shows you the trace. Notice that the steps that are executed are the ones
defined in the httpRequestPipeline (resolve site, resolve language, resolve device, and so on).

Aggregated statistics about component load times are also available on the /sitecore/admin/stats.aspx
page. Total time represents the total time it has taken to load the control across all invocations.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Publishing
Introduction
Objectives
By the end of this topic you will be able to:

Describe the different publishing modes.
Name three elements that publishing restrictions apply to.
Discuss recommended practices for publishing strategies.

Content
Types of Publishing

Publishing Restrictions

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Publishing Strategies

Demo – Publishing Options and Restrictions
In the following walkthrough, we will:

Set up publishing restrictions using Sitecore Rocks.
Set up publishing restrictions using the Content Editor.

In the Content Editor, select a content item such as terms‐and‐conditions under: /sitecore/sitecore‐
cycling‐holidays/Home.
On the ribbon, select Publish tab > Change restrictions:

Look at the three tabs – Version, Item, and Target:

If you clear the Publishable checkbox on the Versions or Item tab, that item or version will be removed
when the item is next published.
If you set a Publishable From and Publishable To date and time, the item or version will be publishable
between those dates and times only.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Go back to the Content Editor. On the Publish tab, click Publishing Viewer. This dialog shows a graph
of when a particular version was available on the live site:

Switch to Sitecore Rocks. Right‐click the item that you worked on in the Content Editor, and select
Tasks>Set Publishing Restrictions. A similar interface to the one displayed in the Content Editor will
appear:

Sitecore Rocks and Publishing

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Tip
See the Content API Cookbook for information on how to publish an item using the API:
http://sdn.sitecore.net/upload/sitecore6/64/content_api_cookbook_sc64_and_later‐a4.pdf

© Sitecore 2014

Publishing improvements in Sitecore 7.2
https://www.sitecore.net/Learn/Blogs/Technical‐
Blogs/Reinnovations/Posts/2014/03/Publishing‐Improvements‐in‐7‐2.aspx
Publishing through Sitecore Rocks
http://www.sitecore.net/unitedkingdom/Community/Technical‐Blogs/Trevor‐
Campbell/Posts/2013/02/28‐Days‐of‐Sitecore‐Rocks‐Publishing.aspx

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Installing and Scaling Sitecore
Introduction
Objectives
By the end of this topic you will be able to:









Discuss the installer’s functionality.
Name two tools that can be used to install Sitecore using scripts.
Describe the three system components that get installed.
Name three folders that get installed.
Discuss what these folders contain.
Draw out the production/live environment as recommended by Sitecore.
Name a guide to help with scaling a solution.

Content
Installer or Manual .ZIP Files

Tip
Using the installer, you can install the databases only on the DB server. The client installation must be
performed separately, so you will run the installer twice.

Important
When you have used the .exe for installation, you should use add/remove programs to uninstall it. If you
just delete the files and databases and so on, you will leave entries in your registry.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Scripts (SIM or Sitecore Rocks)

SIM download and documentation:
http://marketplace.sitecore.net/en/Modules/Sitecore_Instance_Manager.aspx
Sitecore Rocks:
http://marketplace.sitecore.net/Modules/Sitecore_Rocks.aspx

Sitecore’s Include Folder

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Scaling Infrastructure

Complex Scaling Scenarios

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

More Complex Scaling Scenarios

Important
Requirements depend 100% on the size of your solution, the expected traffic and on whether or not you
are using personalization and analytics features.
Installation Guides
http://sdn.sitecore.net/Products/Sitecore%20V5/Sitecore%20CMS%206/Installation.aspx
Troubleshooting
http://sdn.sitecore.net/Products/Sitecore%20V5/Sitecore%20CMS%206/Installation%20Troubleshootin
g.aspx
Scaling guide
http://sdn.sitecore.net/Reference/Sitecore%206/Scaling%20Guide.aspx

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Team Development and the Development Environment
Introduction
Objectives
By the end of this topic you will be able to:







List the two development environments and their uses.
Describe how to sync your files and content across environments.
Name three tools used for serialization.
Describe packages.
Name the ASPX used to for upgrading Sitecore.

Content
Setting Up a Solution
Development
model
Inside the web
root:

Benefits
•
•

Outside the
web root:

© Sitecore 2014

Solution setup is quick and
straightforward
If your team is using the code‐
beside development model, you
will be able to see your changes
almost immediately

No clear separation of ownership
Difficult to transform configuration files
Development sites may contain code‐
beside files or other unnecessary artifacts
that may alter site behavior inadvertently

Clear separation between the
solution files and Sitecore‐owned
files
Ability to transform configuration
files within local developer
environments without changing
the default config files
Better suited for multi‐site
solutions
Solutions can be bundled easily
for shipment
Development sites remain clear of
code‐behind files

Changes to code typically need to be
compiled and copied to the web root in
order to see the changes and debug,
which can also trigger your application to
recycle
Initial solution setup can be complex as
you create and employ custom post‐build
actions

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Source Control and Serialization Options

Important
Serialization may not be appropriate when deploying changes to a staging or production environment
because it overwrites items.

Walkthrough – Serializing Items
In the following walkthrough, we will:




1.
2.
3.

Serialize the entire database using http://traincore/sitecore/admin/serialization.aspx.
Serialize items using the Developer tab in the Content Editor.
Serialize items using Sitecore Rocks.

Navigate to the serialization page – http://traincore/sitecore/admin/serialization.aspx and serialize one of
the databases in its entirety.
Navigate to the /Data/serialization folder and note that a folder with serialized items has been created
as a result.
Log into the Content Editor and demonstrate that databases, individual items, or item trees can be
serialized from the Developer tab:

Using Sitecore Rocks, demonstrate that items can be serialized by right‐clicking and selecting Tools >
Serialization:

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Important
Serializing the database will not serialize users and roles. However, you can serialize them from the Role
Manager and User Manager interfaces on the Sitecore Desktop.

Tip
You can change the folder that items are serialized to by changing the following setting in the web.config:

Serialization guide:
http://sdn.sitecore.net/Reference/Sitecore%207/Serialization%20Guide.aspx
Team Development for Sitecore:
http://www.hhogdev.com/Products/Team‐Development‐for‐Sitecore/Overview.aspx

Tip
See the Package Designer Administration Guide if you are using the Package Designer interface on the
Sitecore Desktop:
http://sdn.sitecore.net/Reference/Sitecore%207/Package%20Designer%20Administrator%20Guide.aspx

Important
When you package security accounts, all passwords are lost and have to be reset.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Update Packages

Demo – Create a Package Using Sitecore Desktop
In the following walkthrough, we will:


1.
2.
3.
4.

Create a package using the Package Designer in the Sitecore Desktop.

Log into the Sitecore Desktop and click Sitecore > Development Tools > Package Designer.
Items can be added statically or dynamically using a query (for example, all items created in the past four
days).
You can preview package contents using Preview > Lookup.
Generate a .zip file to create a file in the file system.

Tip
You can change the folder that packages are built to by changing the following setting in the web.config:

Walkthrough – Create a Package Using Sitecore Rocks
In the following walkthrough, we will:

Create a package using Sitecore Rocks.

In Solution Explorer, right‐click the Training solution and select the Add > New Item option.

Select Sitecore from the Visual C# menu on the left side of the screen. Then select the Sitecore
Package option, and give it a name.

Connect it to the Traincore instance when prompted.

Click on the Item tab then drag and drop items from the tree into the package.

Drag and drop files from the /Website folder in Sitecore Rocks into the package and notice that they are
added into the File tab.
Note: you cannot drag and drop files from your solution, because solution files are independent of the
Sitecore instance.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Notice that right‐clicking on an item gives you options to add, remove, and update its children:

You also have the option to add dependencies. For example, if you add an item, you may want to add its
template, associated renderings, and potentially any other items it references.

Build a package and open Windows Explorer when prompted. Notice that a .zip file has been created in
the same location as your solution. However Sitecore stores packages in the Data folder of the Sitecore
installation.

To install a package, right‐click the Sitecore instance in Sitecore Rocks and select Manage Packages…

10. Click Upload and Install to upload a package to the instance:

11. When the package appears, click Install. You are given the option to Analyze and Create Anti‐Package
before installing:

Anti‐packages allow you to remove the files and items that were installed, and restore the files and
items that were changed.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Apply – Topic 9.5 – 5 min
Install a Package
Install a Package Using Sitecore Rocks
Using Sitecore Rocks, install the package you just created in the walkthrough.

To install a package, right‐click the Sitecore instance and click the Manage Packages… option.

Only packages in your package repository will be visible. Either use the Repositories button to add a
repository with a package file, or copy the package file into the existing repository (the Data folder, in
your Sitecore installation).

Notice that you can generate an anti‐package that functions as an uninstaller.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore NuGet Packages
http://vsplugins.sitecore.net/Sitecore‐NuGet.ashx

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

How to Deal with Deployment
Introduction
Objectives
By the end of this topic you will be able to:

State the difference between publishing and deployment.
List some points to remember when deploying to an authoring environment.
Discuss options for reverse content promotion.

Content
Difference Between Publishing and Deployment

Deployment Between Environments

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Points to Remember

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Basic Security
Introduction
Objectives
By the end of this topic you will be able to:







Name the application for defining access rights.
Name the application for viewing the resolved access rights.
List two entities that access rights can be assigned to.
Describe the three permissions that are applied to access rights.
Discuss how to override access rights.

Content
Security Editor and Access Viewer

Tip
For more information about setting up roles and access rights, please refer to the Security
Administrator’s Cookbook:
http://sdn.sitecore.net/upload/sitecore7/70/security_administrators_cookbook_sc70‐a4.pdf
You can also attend Sitecore’s the Security Administrator course: http://www.sitecore.net/services‐and‐
support/training/administrator‐training/ssa‐sitecore‐cms‐security‐administrator.aspx

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Recommended Practices
Define a role per task (for example, news editor or image library manager) and avoid defining access
rights directly on users. That way, it is easier to maintain a team of editors as their job responsibilities
change.

© Sitecore 2014

Security reference
http://sdn.sitecore.net/Reference/Sitecore%206/Security%20Reference.aspx
Security API Cookbook
http://sdn.sitecore.net/Reference/Sitecore%206/Security%20API%20Cookbook.aspx

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Workflow
Introduction
Objectives
By the end of this topic you will be able to:






Describe the purpose of a workflow.
Discuss what a workflow consists of.
State when an item is publishable.
State three workflow recommendations.

Content
Business Use Case
It may be illegal to have certain content online at certain points in time forcing authors to create new
versions of the content. Or with some sensitive material, authors may have to have different groups
in the organization approve the material before it can go live. Workflows allow you to set one source
of responsibility for these issues.

Demo – Using a Workflow as an Author
In the following demo, we will:

Push an item through workflow.

Using the Content Editor, right‐click on the /sitecore/content/sitecore‐cycling‐holidays/Home/holidays
item and insert a New Holiday. Name it All‐around‐the‐world.
Notice that a message appears at the top of the content pane:

Click the arrow under the Edit button on the ribbon, and select Submit:

Enter a comment when prompted.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum
5.

Website Development for.Net Developer

This is a two‐step workflow. Right‐click on the arrow under the Edit button a second time, and select
Approve. Write a comment when prompted. This item will now go into a final workflow state, and is
then publishable. In this particular case, entering into the final workflow states triggers an automatic
publish of the item.

Tip
You can also use the Workbox interface to manage bulk manage items in workflow. This interface is
available on the Sitecore Desktop, or as a button at the bottom of the Content Editor. You can also use
the Review tab in the Content Editor:

Best Practices
Workflow is useful for two reasons in particular; it maintains a history of changes, allowing authors to
roll back to a previous version, and it prevents accidental publishing of content. Only content in a final
state will appear on the live site. We recommend that you:
 Specify workflows on the Standard Values of a template.
 Use workflows from the beginning for all the content.
 Use clean up scripts to remove unnecessary, older numbered
versions.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

What Is a Workflow?

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Marketing Functionality
Contents:




© Sitecore 2014

Introduction to the Customer Experience Platform (XP)
Engagement Value and Goals
Profiling and Personalization

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Introduction to the Customer Experience Platform (XP)
Introduction
By the end of this topic your will be able to:






State the three main features of the Customer Experience Platform.
List two types of reports.
Describe why componentization and the use of datasources are integral to using the XP.
Discuss why building for the XP is much easier than retrofitting features later on.

Content
Marketing Functionality

Building for the XP

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

I’m Not Using It yet

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Engagement Value and Goals
Introduction
By the end of the topic you will be able to:






Describe the difference between value and traffic.
Create goals and assign them.
View the Dashboard and Engagement Analytics reports.
Set up and run multivariate tests.

Content
Value vs. Traffic

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Best Practice
Deciding what your goals are and how much they are worth is crucial to the collection of meaningful
data. Customers are strongly encouraged to attend the XP Scoping Workshop:
http://www.sitecore.net/unitedkingdom/Support/Consulting‐Services/Business‐Optimization‐
Services/CEP‐Scoping‐Workshop.aspx.

Demo – Create and Assign a Goal
In the following demo, we will:

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

Using the Marketing Center, create a goal called Book a holiday.
Give it a value of 50.
In the Content Editor, locate the booking page and assign the goal using the Goals button
on the Analyze tab.

Using the Marketing Center, create a goal called Book a holiday.
Give it a value of 50. The entire Sitecore Cycling Holidays site is geared toward selling cycling holidays,
so this is the most important task an author can perform.
On the Review tab, deploy the goal, (it is automatically part of an approval process and needs to be
published. You will learn more about this in module 10).
In the Content Editor, locate the booking thank‐you page and assign the goal using the Goals
command on the Analyze tab.
Open another browser, for example, Internet Explorer, and book a holiday.
You will be redirected to the thank‐you page after a successful booking.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Demo – Executive Insight Dashboard and Engagement Analytics
In the following demo, we will:



1.
2.
3.
4.

View the Executive Insight Dashboard.
View the Engagement Analytics reports.

Open the Executive Insight Dashboard and select the Visits checkbox on the right side of the screen.
The resulting graph shows the average value per visit for the time period specified.
Note that you can view by year, month, week or day.
Note the other overview statistics that the Dashboard provides: average value per visit by entry page,
search key word, source and referring site.
By contrast, Engagement Analytics reports are much more granular. Expand the Reports item. Click the
Sales > Top Leads by Value > Unclassified organizations options. (Make sure that you have selected a
wide date range).
Note that you can apply filters, subscribe to a particular lead, or view more details about that lead,
including drilling down to individual visits.
Locate the session where you completed the holiday booking goal. Note that the visit has an
engagement value associated with it.
Engagement Analytics reports also provides statistics on particular events related to site health (for
example, common mistakes and not found URLs).

Tip
The Dashboard collects data over time and only displays data when the number of visits recorded exceeds
the MimimumVisitsFilter (set to 50 by default) that was set in:
\sitecore\shell\Applications\Reports\Dashboard\Configuration.config

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Tip
You need to think about testing before you start building. Given that you can change the datasource or
component, think about the following examples:

If you want to vary color or design, change the component. On the Sitecore Cycling Holidays
website, color and design is, in part, determined by parameters. This means we need to set up
a separate testing component if we want to test design.
If you want to vary content that is not part of the main content of a component such as button
text or form labels, these values need to be defined on your datasource. For example, you
might have a ‘form’ component that accepts a ‘form’ item on the Sitecore Cycling Holidays
website. Our forms use values from the Domain Dictionary, so we would need to set up a
separate testing component.
If you expect to be doing a lot of multivariate testing, make sure you componentize your page
and keep all testable values in a data source. The functionality relies entirely on being able to
change components and datasources.

Demo – Setting Up a Multivariate Test
In the following demo, we will:

Set up a multivariate test on a General Widget component.

Open the homepage in Edit mode and make sure the Designing checkbox is selected on the View tab.

Select the component you wish to test. Click the Test the component button on the context menu.

Add a new variation (It will default to what is already selected). Then add a second variation and only
change the datasource of the component.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Notice that you can scroll between the variations.

Smart publish the page and start the test by navigating to the Testing tab and clicking the Start Test
button. An item will be created in the tree at this point. There are extended properties on this item (such
as, whether to make the variation sticky or random).

Look at the homepage in different browsers, using different sessions to emulate different visits (for
example, in Internet Explorer, select File > New Session). Note that you now receive a variation of the
component at random.

In one of the sessions, complete the goal that was set up earlier in the module.

Go back into editing mode and look at the results of the test. You may have to recycle the application
pool to see the value.

Stop the test and you will be given the option to pick the winning component.

Important
Test results are only used to determine which component to select. They are not saved.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Apply – Topic 10.2
Creating and Assigning Goals
Create and Assign a Contact Page Goal
1.

Using the Sitecore Desktop, open the Marketing Center.

Create a new goal called Viewed contact page and assign it a max value of 5.

On the Review tab, deploy the goal.

Using the Content Editor, assign the goal to the contact page by selecting the item, clicking the Goals
option on the Analyze tab, and then selecting that goal you created.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Profiling and Personalization
Introduction
By the end of this topic you will be able to







Set up profile dimensions and keys.
Describe how a profile card aggregates profile keys within a dimension.
Assign profile cards to items.
Set up a custom profile card.
State the difference between a profile card and a pattern card.

Content
Personalization

Best Practice
Encourage authors to make content profiling a routine task or risk ending up with 40,000 items that
require profiling. Make sure that a meaningful profile taxonomy has been created. Defining dimensions,
keys, profile cards and pattern cards is a business decision not a development decision.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Demo – Personalize Based on Page Visited
In the following demo, we will:

Set up a personalization rule that changes a homepage General Widget component
datasource to Expert Holidays if the Battle of the Hills site has been visited.

Using the Page Editor, select one of the General Widget components on the home page.

Click the Personalization button.

Add a new condition – name it Experts.

Create a rule that says when Battle of the Hills has been visited:

In the Personalize Content dropdown menu, select: /sitecore/content/sitecore‐cycling‐
holidays/global/reusable‐content/for‐experts.

Republish the page, and log out of the Page Editor.

Open a new browser, such as Internet Explorer. Ensure that the browser cache is cleared.

Browse to http://traincore/. Note which General Widget components are being displayed.

Visit the Battle of the Hills holiday page, and then go back to Home. The component should now be
displaying the for‐experts content.

Profiling Content Items

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Demo – Profile Content
In the following demo, we will:

Assign Tourist profile card to a holiday in the Holidays profiling dimension.
Assign custom point values in the Bike’s profiling dimension.

Open the Content Editor.

Select the Battle of the Hills holiday item under: /sitecore/content/sitecore‐cycling‐
holidays/Home/holidays.

Click the Analytics icon in the top right‐hand corner of the content pane:

Click Edit next to the Holidays profile dimension.

Select the Tourist profile card. This bulk assigns certain profile points, which you can see in the right‐
hand graph:

Click OK, and then click Edit next to the Bikes profile dimension.

Click the Customize button in the top right‐hand corner.

Set Mountain Bike to 10.

Click OK, and then click Close.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Optional Topics
Contents:






© Sitecore 2014

Branch Templates
Other Item and Template Properties
Pipelines and Events
Rules
Placeholder Overrides

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Branch Templates
Introduction
Objectives
By the end of this topic you will be able to:

Describe how to create a list of child items for an item in one click.

Content
Branch Templates

Walkthrough: Creating a Branch Template
In this walkthrough you will learn how to:
 Create branch templates in the Template Manager.
 Assign a new branch template as an insert option for the Trip Details data template.

Open http://BasicSitecore in Sitecore Rocks. If it does not already exists, create a data template named
Bicycle and set it as an insert option on the Trip Details standard values.

To create a new branch template, navigate to /sitecore/templates/Branches/User Defined (ensure that
Hidden items is checked in the View tab) and select New Branch.

Select the Trip Details data template as your starting point, and click Create.

Click on the $name item that uses a globe icon. Click the Home tab. You will see Bicycle as an insert
option. Insert three Bicycle items – call them $name Bike option 1, $name Bike option 2 and $name Bike
option 3.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Knowledge Check
What will happen to the $name token when an item is created based on the Trip Details branch template?

Assign this Trip Details branch template as an insert option for the Holidays Section.

Let’s create an instance of this branch template. Navigate to /sitecore/content/home/Family Holidays item
and, from the insert options, select the Trip Details branch.

Give the trip a name – such as ‘Experience Budapest’.

A new sub‐tree has been created and all $name tokens have been replaced with Experience Budapest:

Note
Branch templates can be assigned as insert options on standard values in exactly the same way as
regular templates.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Other Item and Template Properties
Introduction
Objectives
By the end of this topic you will be able to:








Explain language versions.
Discuss numbered versions.
State three types of field versioning.
Explain the purpose of setting the field source.
Describe where to set field sorting.
Discuss where to set helper text.

Content
Language and Numbered Versions

Important
For content to exist you need to have a language version and at least one numbered version of the
content.
You may have a website where content is needed in ten different languages. Instead of creating ten
individual websites for each language or using .NET resource files, you can add languages to the Sitecore
implementation without the developer’s involvement.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Demo – Languages and Numbered Versions
In this demo you will see:

That you can have content in different languages.
How to create a numbered version
How field versioning works.

The following demos use the http://BasicSitecore instance.

Languages and Numbered Versions
1.

Using Sitecore Rocks, right‐click the master database and select Tools > Manage.

Right‐click in the editor pane and select the Add New Language… > Danish.

Navigate to the Explore Holland item and switch between the languages. Notice there is no content
showing for the Danish language because there is no numbered version under it.

For the Danish language, you need to add a new numbered version of the content so right‐click in the
editor pane and select Versions > Add Version.

Switch languages in the browser using sc_lang query string (?sc_lang=da‐DK).

Field Versioning
What if travel agents needed a unique ID for every trip details item? You would not want authors to
have to retype an ID every single time they create a new numbered version of that item, or a new
language. They can easily make mistakes and this is where shared fields come in.
1.

In the Trip Details data template, create a new field section called Holiday Admin and a field called
Holiday ID, which is shared (single value for all versions in all languages).

Enter a default value for the Holiday ID field.

Navigate back to Explore Holland and switch between the language and number versions, and notice
that the field value is the same.

A month has passed and you need a new numbered version of the content. Create V#2 in Danish.

Switch between DK v#1 and DK v#2 (same field value).

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Business Use Case
What if you have a field with a name of a country that you want to keep the same for all numbered
versions in a particular language? For example, the country itself doesn’t change, but every language
may spell a country name differently. This is where unversioned fields come in.
6.

In the Trip Details data template, create a new field called Country, which is Unversioned (single value
per language).

Enter a default value for the Country field.

Navigate back to Explore Holland and switch between the language and number versions. Notice the
English version is different from the Danish one, which is empty.

Fill in the Danish field with USA.

10. Switch to English v#1 (different value).

The Holiday ID field is the same for all languages and all numbered versions, whereas the Country field is
language specific, same value for each language and each version number under it.

Field Versioning

Tip
If you have an item representing a setting, for example a CSS class, you would want that to be the same
across all languages for that item. This is a good candidate for making a field ‘Shared’ and ‘Unversioned’
– meaning it’s the same across all languages, and there is only one numbered version of that item. Note
that a shared field is automatically unversioned.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Demo – Helping Authors
In the following demo, we will:

Sort fields.
Add help text to fields.
Change the Title of a field to something more intuitive.

This demo uses the http://BasicSitecore instance.

Field Sorting
In this demo you will see that fields have a sorting order and can be reordered for display in the editor pane.

In the __Standard Values item for the Trip Details data template notice the order of the field sections
Basic Information and Trip Information.

To change the sorting order we need to go to the definition of those field sections. Navigate to
/sitecore/templates/User Defined/Trip Details/Trip Information, right‐click in the Editor pane, and in the
context menu, select the Standard Fields option.

In the standard fields look for the _Sortorder field in the Data field section.

Change the value to 0 (bringing that field section to the top).

Double‐click /sitecore/templates/User Defined/Base/Basic Information, and change the value of _Sortorder
field to 10 (bringing that field section beneath Trip Information).

Open up the __Standard Values item for the Trip Details data template and notice that your field
sections have now changed order.

Lastly, right‐click again in the Editor pane and clear the Standard Fields checkbox.

Help Text
In this demo you will see that fields can have helper text added to them to help authors fill in fields.

In the Content Editor, double‐click the Type field definition item /sitecore/templates/User Defined/Trip
Details/Trip Information/Price per person and right‐click to view the standard fields.

Find the Help field section. In the __Short description field, type: This must have two decimal places.

In the __Long description field, type: A validation rule will ensure that this field has two decimal places.

Preview a bicycle item or create a new bicycle item. You should see fields amended.

Tip
Using the Contend Editor, a quicker way to get to the help fields is to select the field definition items in
the tree. But instead of viewing standard fields, you can click on the Configure tab and the help command.
This opens up the Help field section.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Title Field
If you want to completely change the field name that is displayed to authors, you can do that in the Title
field. For example, you can change Holiday ID (which developers will still use and see) to Booking reference
number (which is what authors see).

Navigate to /sitecore/templates/User Defined/Trip Details/Holiday Admin/Holiday ID definition item.

In the Title field (Data field section) enter Booking reference number.

Click the Save button.

Preview any item in the Content Editor.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Show Standard Fields

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Tip
You can create default values for language specific items on the standard values. For example, the
default page image field for English is image A, and for German it’s image B. This is done by creating new
numbered version of that language in the standard values.

Apply – Topic 11.2 – 35 min
Working with Versions, Sorting, Help Fields, and Field Source
In the following labs you will be:







Adding a new language.
Changing field and item versioning.
Altering the sort order for the Bicycle template.
Setting helper text for your Bicycle Information item.
Changing the title field of a particular field definition item.

Lab A. Add a New Language and Some Numbered Versions
1.

Go back to the http://BasicSitecore/ site you created on day one. Expand the BasicSitecore instance
node in Sitecore Rocks.

Using Sitecore Rocks, right‐click the master database and select Tools > Language.

Right‐click in the content pane and select the Add New Language… option.
Language

Select the Danish language.

Navigate to the Explore Holland item and switch between the English and Danish language.

For the Danish language, you need to add a new numbered version of the content. Right‐click in the
Editor pane and select the Versions > Add Version option.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

The fields you get in a new version are blank because the field values have not been defined on the
standard values for that particular language. Enter some values for the fields.

In the Trip Details data template, create a new field section called Holiday Admin and two new fields
called Holiday ID, which is Shared (single value for all versions in all languages), and a field called
Country which is Unversioned (single value per language).

Enter a default values for the Holiday ID and the Country fields in the Standard fields.

10. Navigate back to Explore Holland and switch between the language and number versions. Notice that
the Holiday ID value is the same between languages, but the Country value in English is different from
the Danish one, which is empty.
11. Fill in the Danish field with USA.
9.

Switch to English v#1 (different value).

10. Create V#2 in Danish by right‐clicking the Editor pane and then select the Versions > Add Version
option.

11. Switch between DK v#1 and DK v#2 (they should be the same value – USA).

Lab B. Field Source
In this lab, you will specify a location of where your authors can select images.

In the Content Editor, navigate to a content item – such as Explore Holland at:
/sitecore/content/Home/Family Holidays/Explore Holland.

Change the image and note the browsing location.

Close that and navigate to the Explore Holland data template using the Quick Info section.

Remember we are inheriting that image field from the Base data template, so navigate to Base.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum
5.

Website Development for.Net Developer

Change the field source to be the location of a folder in media library.

Tip
You can use the item path in the tree or the GUID for field source. There are different field sources
depending on different field types. We will cover this later in the course.
6.

In the source field type /sitecore/media library/Images or use the GUID of that item.

Go back to Explore Holland and browse to an image or check the standard values. Note the change of
location.

Lab C. Changing the Sort Order
In this lab you will change the sort order of the Bicycle fields.

View the __Standard Values item for the Trip Details data template.

Note the order of the fields Holiday ID and Country in the Holiday Admin section. We are going to swap
their order.

Double‐click the Holiday ID item at: /sitecore/templates/User Defined/Trip Details/Holiday Admin/Holiday
ID.

Right‐click inside the editing pane to view the standard fields.

Change the __Sortorder field to 20.

Double‐click on the Type item at: /sitecore/templates/User Defined/Trip Details/Holiday Admin/Country.

Change the _Sortorder field to 200.

Right‐click again to clear the Standard Fields checkbox.

Open up the __Standard Values item for the Bicycle data template, and notice that your fields have now
changed order.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Tip
You can change the sort order of template sections in exactly the same way. As well as manually
updating the sort order fields, you can right‐click on items in Sitecore Rocks and choose Tools > Sorting
to select the options there. The lower the number the higher it appears in the hierarchy.
Lab D. Help Fields
In this lab you will add some help text to your Bicycle Information fields using the Content Editor.

Using the Content Editor, double‐click the Type field definition item at: /sitecore/templates/User
Defined/Trip Details/Holiday Admin/Holiday ID and on the ribbon, select View > Standard Fields.

2. Find the Help field section and the __Short description field. Enter This is the ID from your external feed.
3.

Double‐click the Country field definition item at: /sitecore/templates/User Defined/Trip Details/Holiday
Admin/Country.

Find the Help field section and the __Short description field, enter Remember that the country name is
translated.

Look at an existing bicycle item and you will see the help text appear next to the fields.

Lab E. Title Field
In this lab you will change the way the field name is displayed to authors, however your field definition will
stay the same. This is particularly useful in case authors need a longer description for a field but as a
developer you still reference a different name/ID.

In the Content Editor, navigate to: /sitecore/templates/User Defined/Trip Details/Holiday Admin/Holiday
ID definition item.

In the Title field (Data field section), enter: Booking reference number.

Preview any item that has that field in the Content Editor.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Pipelines and Events
Introduction
Objectives
By the end of this topic you will be able to:









Define pipelines and events.
Describe where to configure pipelines and events.
Describe the type format for the .
Name the most important pipeline.
Name the method that all processors implement.
State which files are used to patch your processor into the pipeline.
List three options for creating pipelines.

Content
Introduction to Pipelines

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Creating Pipelines Option 1

Creating Pipelines Options 2 & 3

Important
Upgrading Sitecore may change the original code that you are inheriting from, which means that your
pipeline may need updating.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Introduction to Events

Subscribing to Events and Using Event Handlers

Tip
For an example of how to create an Insert Options pipeline, see The Data Definition Cookbook:
http://sdn.sitecore.net/upload/sitecore6/datadefinitioncookbook‐a4.pdf
For more information about events, see John West’s blog:
http://www.sitecore.net/Learn/Blogs/Technical‐Blogs/John‐West‐Sitecore‐Blog/Posts/2011/05/All‐About‐
Events‐in‐the‐Sitecore‐ASPNET‐CMS.aspx

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

When Would You Use Pipelines or Events?

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Rules
Introduction
Objectives
By the end of this topic you will be able to:

Define a rule.
Name the two fields that define a rule.

Content
Sitecore Rules Engine & Rules

How Does a Rule Work for Authors?

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Walkthrough: Implementation of Insert Options Rule
In the following walkthrough, we will:
 Create an insert options rule that adds Simple Link as an insert option to any item whose
name equals Links.

Create a new Insert Option Rule called Link.
In the Name field enter Links.
In the Rule field enter:
Where the item name is equal to Links.
add Simple Link insert option
(/BaseCore/Global Content/Simple Link).
Under: /sitecore/content/sitecore‐cycling‐
holidays/Global create a Links item using the
common Sitecore folder.
Notice the insert option includes Simple Link.
There are many other conditions and actions that are useful regardless of what the purpose or context of
the rule is. Those are defined under a common folder:
/sitecore/system/settings/rules/common/Conditions/Items. Find Item Name, which is the rule we used in
step #3.

Business Use Case






Ecommerce website visitors have a shopping cart and based on what they have
purchased, you can change what is displayed in a component.
Have a tree structure for news articles, for example, Year, Month, Day. When an
author creates a new news article at the top level of this structure. Using a rule, this
article can be slotted into its corresponding folder.
Hide Insert options based on what level the tree is on.
You may wish to boost items when indexing data by. For example, you might use a
rule to apply a different boost depend on an item’s level in the hierarchy:
http://www.sitecore.net/Community/Technical‐Blogs/John‐West‐Sitecore‐
Blog/Posts/2013/05/Sitecore‐7‐Boosting‐Items‐By‐Depth‐with‐the‐Rules‐
Engine.aspx

© Sitecore 2014

Rules engine cookbook
http://sdn.sitecore.net/Reference/Sitecore%206/Rules%20Engine%20Cookbook.aspx

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Placeholder Overrides
Introduction
Objectives
By the end of this topic you will be able to:

Override a placeholder setting for a particular item.

Content
Demo: Create Placeholder Setting Override
In the following walkthrough, we will:
 Create a new placeholder control in the mark‐up.
 Create a placeholder override, which in effect is a duplicate of the original placeholder,
with different “allowed controls” – per instance of an item. You can also set it up on the
standard values so that every item would get this override.

In Page Editor look at the Home item – component called Gallery in the gallerycontainer placeholder.

Notice that you can add banner and gallery component to that placeholder.

Go to another item and show that you can still add banner and gallery to the gallerycontainer
placeholder.

Let’s say for this page you are not allowed to add a gallery and
you only want static image to appear. Navigate to the gallery
container placeholder, click Create New Settings call it
gallerycontainer‐banner‐only and edit the allowed controls to
allow Banner to be the only component.

Notice the placeholder name changed to: gallerycontainer‐
banner‐only.

Now when you click Add to here you only see Banner.

Navigate back to home, show the old placeholder with its
options.

Switch to the Content Editor and show the new placeholder item that was created in the background.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

What are Placeholder Overrides Used For?

Tip
Generally, you tend to specify overrides on the item’s template’s standard values, but you can specify
placeholder overrides per item.

How to Override a Placeholder Setting

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

In the Content Editor

Where to Override Placeholder Settings

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Apply – Topic 11.5 – 20 min (OPTIONAL)
Create Placeholder Setting Override
It is important to ensure that presentation details are configured correctly for the Page Editor. This involves
setting up placeholder settings and placeholder settings overrides.
A scenario for overriding a placeholder
 You have created a holidays page, and it has used the global placeholder ‘gallerycontainer’
 For the holidays page, you only want to allow authors to put the ‘banner’ component on the page.
But the gallerycontainer placeholder has no restrictions on it; it allows authors to add a Banner and
a Gallery component.
You want to set this restriction for all holiday pages ‐ globally.

A change request has come in to restrict authors to be able to add only the Banner component to the
gallerycontainer placeholder for all the holiday pages.

Open Traincore. In the Page Editor navigate to: /Sitecore‐cycling‐holidays/Home/holidays/battle‐of‐the‐
hills

Make sure you are in Design mode.

On the holiday page, click the Banner component, and navigate to the gallerycontainer placeholder
using the arrow icon.

Click Add to here.

As an author you are allowed to add only a Gallery or a Banner component into this placeholder – click
cancel – think of it as Insert Options for a placeholder.

Select the gallerycontainer placeholder again and, this time, click the command on the ribbon to Edit
the placeholder settings.

Click the Create New Settings tab.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Name the new placeholder gallerycontainer‐banneronly.

In the allowed controls, you can specify the allowed controls that this placeholder can have. Set the
Banner component as an allowed control. The path is: Layout/Renderings/BaseCore/Banner and click OK.

10. Save the item.
2
Name the new
placeholder

Set the allowed controls
Create a new
placeholder
settings item

11. Confirm that the placeholder used now is the new one.

12. Click the Add to here button to confirm that only Banner is the only allowed control.

Copy the Placeholder Override to the Standard Values
1.

Stay in the Page Editor. On the ribbon, select the Advanced tab and click Details.

For the Default device, click Copy To at the bottom of that device.

Check the Default Device checkbox and select the standard values for that holiday page. The path is:
/Templates/BaseCore/Pages/Holiday/__Standard Values.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum
4.

Website Development for.Net Developer

Click Copy then OK in the Layout Details dialog.

1
Select the
Default device

Select the
required
__Standard
Values item

If you add a new holiday page, it will automatically get the gallerycontainer‐banneronly placeholder.

Tip
If you want a placeholder override to apply to all items based on the holiday data template, modify the
presentation details on the holiday data template’s standard values. Add a new placeholder setting that
overrides gallerycontainer; this change will then be reflected on all news items.

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Review
Contents:













© Sitecore 2014

Module 1 – Sitecore Overview
Module 2 – Defining Data
Module 3 – Presentation
Module 4 – Sitecore API
Module 5 – Advanced Presentation Concepts
Module 6 – Real World Solutions
Module 7 – Configuring the Page Editor
Module 8 – Dealing with Your Data
Module 9 – Recommended Practices
Module 10 – Marketing Functionality
Module 11 – Optional Topics

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Sitecore Overview

What Is Sitecore

Sitecore from an Author’s Perspective

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Module 2
Topic 2.1

© Sitecore 2014

Website Development for.Net Developer

Sitecore from an Developer’s Perspective

Defining Data
Defining Data Structure

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Data Template Inheritance

Standard Values

© Sitecore 2014

Website Development for.Net Developer

Sitecore Official Curriculum

© Sitecore 2014

Website Development for.Net Developer

Presentation Is Dynamic and Modular

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Preparing to Build

Creating a Layout

© Sitecore 2014

Website Development for.Net Developer

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Creating Components

Dynamic Binding

© Sitecore 2014

Website Development for.Net Developer

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Module 4
Topic 4.1

© Sitecore 2014

Website Development for.Net Developer

Outputting Content

Sitecore API
Basic API Concepts

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Topic 4.1 (continued) Retrieving Items

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Creating, Deleting and Modifying Items

Working with Complex Fields

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Module 5
Topic 5.1

© Sitecore 2014

Website Development for.Net Developer

Advanced Presentation Concepts
Datasources

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Module 6
Topic 6.1

© Sitecore 2014

Website Development for.Net Developer

Real World Solutions
Familiar Concepts

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Dealing with Larger Sites

© Sitecore 2014

Website Development for.Net Developer

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Configuring the Page Editor

Datasource Restrictions

Parameters and Parameter Templates

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Placeholder Restrictions

Topic 7.3 (continued) Compatible Renderings / Allowed Controls

© Sitecore 2014

Advanced Page Editor Configuration

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Dealing with Your Data

© Sitecore 2014

Website Development for.Net Developer

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Recommended Practices

Working with Media

Caching and Performance

© Sitecore 2014

Website Development for.Net Developer

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Installing and Scaling Sitecore

Team Development and Development Environment

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

How to Deal with Deployment

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Marketing Functionality

Introduction to the XP

Engagement Value and Goals

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Profiling and Personalization

Optional Topics

Branch Templates

© Sitecore 2014

Website Development for.Net Developer

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Website Development for.Net Developer

Other Item and Template Properties

Pipelines and Events

© Sitecore 2014

Sitecore Official Curriculum

Placeholder Overrides

© Sitecore 2014

Website Development for.Net Developer

Source Exif Data:

File Type                       : PDF
File Type Extension             : pdf
MIME Type                       : application/pdf
PDF Version                     : 1.5
Linearized                      : No
Has XFA                         : No
Page Count                      : 261
XMP Toolkit                     : Adobe XMP Core 5.4-c005 78.147326, 2012/08/23-13:03:03
Creator Tool                    : PScript5.dll Version 5.2.2
Modify Date                     : 2018:09:20 18:01:47+07:00
Create Date                     : 2014:10:17 14:18:08+01:00
Format                          : application/pdf
Title                           : Microsoft Word - WND-CourseManual_v7.2.0.1.docx
Creator                         : atm
Producer                        : Acrobat Distiller 11.0 (Windows)
Document ID                     : uuid:8c709484-4323-4e7d-8569-cef96d1a42dd
Instance ID                     : uuid:81e3a8da-280e-4980-8a66-24153b9493d6
Author                          : atm

EXIF Metadata provided by EXIF.tools