EPiGirl

EPiServer Customer and Partner Day 08

2008-10-16T23:54:00.002+13:00

London's first EPiServer Customer and Partner Day ran yesterday with great success. We had a significant turnout, fantastic speakers and interesting breakout sessions. I heard nothing but positive feedback throughout the day.

I just want to say a big thankyou to all those that contributed in some way.

For anyone that was unable to attend, I have been told some of the session notes will be available and I will post a link once I have a location.

New Create+ Forum

2008-07-22T22:52:00.002+12:00

The new Create+ package forum is already available, I'm very happy with how quickly these have been setup.

Find it here: http://world.episerver.com/Forum/Pages/Forum.aspx?id=21605

EPiServer CMS 5 R2 and Visual Studio 2008

2008-07-22T21:34:00.003+12:00

While reading up about the new dynamic property functionality in R2 I noticed a small mention that VS 2008 will be fully supported in R2. Only one thing to say to that... Yay!

In the meantime it also points to this great blog entry by Fredrik Tjärnberg on how you can get the EPiServer tools working in 08 now.

X3 How To Series: How to get content function properties on a page

2008-07-05T09:04:00.004+12:00

Given a page or a page collection you may need to find a property which exists within a content function on that page (if that function has been added). An example is a news summary where the heading, date and summary are coming from properties within a body content x3 content function on the child pages.

Use bits of the code below as required for your specific needs.

foreach(PageData page in collection)

{
//Add Dropit.Extension.Controllers
if (PageDataManager.IsExtensionPage(page))
{

ExtensionPageData extPage = ExtensionPageData.Load(page.PageLink);
IList<ContentFunctionData> functions = extPage.GetAllContentFunctions(page.PageLink);

foreach (ContentFunctionData functionData in functions)
{

//functionData is lazy loaded.
functionData.Load();

//access each property by indexer
if (IsValue("Heading", functionData))
{
heading = functionData.Property["Heading"].ToString();
}

//OR

//iterate properties
foreach (PropertyData property in functionData.Property)
{
//do something with properties
}

}

X3 How To Series: How to get the page reference of a content function

2008-07-03T00:54:00.007+12:00

You can access a content function just like a page within EPiServer using the following piece of code. I used this in an xform x3 control to set the statistics information.

Statistics.PageLink = new PageReference(ContentFunctionData.ContentFunctionLink.ID);

X3 Forums & Community Support

2008-07-02T23:32:00.005+12:00

I'm currently working on a large site implementation involving the new x3 functionality. It has been great learning the capabilities of x3 however I miss the community support that is available with EPiServer.

So I had a chat to a couple of people and for those out there who are working with x3, you'll be happy to hear there will be a restructure of the EPiServer world forums to accommodate the new package structure and x3 will sit somewhere within this with Create+. This should be happening sometime after the summer.

In the meantime I will be posting here my learnings from developing with x3. If anybody has any comments, suggestions or links to other x3 developer blogs then please share with us.

EPiServer Developer Summit 2008

2008-07-02T08:16:00.005+12:00

The Friday of the Partner Summit we split off for a full day developer summit which I thoroughly enjoyed. There were some really good sessions and some great speakers. Below is an overview of a few I went to.

For more information you can download the presentations from the partner site here: http://partner.episerver.com/News-Events/Events/Past-events/Partner-Summit-2008-Presentations/

Don't forget to checkout the photos and video while you're there too!

What's New in EPiServer CMS 5 R2 (Roger Wirz)

Lots of editorial changes
Can now perform form management in Firefox & Mac
Added features to help manage and sort forms
New form builder layout; can import & export forms, ability to export as xml and modify.
Advances to image editor; inbuilt cropping, resizing, flip, rotate, greyscale etc
Dynamic content; feed properties and content from somewhere else, can build own plug-in types
Report Center; various reports including unpublished pages, published by me, modified pages, expiring/expired pages. Plug in area so can add your own reports.
Content Channels; can bulk update data in EPiServer e.g. xml data with schema
Convert page type
Custom page provider; enterprise feature only, can have content stored outside of EPiServer database, e.g. stored as xml. Can build your own page providers.

Migrating to EPi5 (Johan Bjornfot)

Migrating Areas

Data, File Systems, Page templates, custom properties

Prerequisites

Must be 4.62 and target must be CMS 5 SP2
SQL Server 2005
Form properties must be converted to XForms

Conversion Times

Object store - ~30 mins / 10,000 obj
Native file system - ~ 10 mins / 1 GB
Link migration - ~25 mins / 10,000 pages (more for translation pages)

What can't be migrated

Oracle based sites
Users and access rights
Mirroring state
Workflows

Performance Troubleshooting (Steve Celius)

80% of download time usually comes from client site

Finding slow areas

Analyse IIS logs (check time_taken, num requests per min, Visual Log Parser)
Fiddler
Performance Monitor (check cpu, req/s & req queue)
JetBrains dotTrace Profiler

Large List Problem

Large collection of pages kills performance
Dynamic properties take up loads of performance

Solution

Split up page lists to less than 250 per subtree
Cache the list
Limit dynamic properties
Less of a problem in EPiServer CMS 5

Find pages with criteria is most resource intensive operation.

Cache results from these and other queries. Check out Steve's CacheFramework.
Use output caching
Cache is invalidated on page publishing

Site Maintenance Using Windows Workflow Foundation (Johan Bjornfot)

Built an example workflow sending tasks between two sites, a source site and a translation site.
Used contentChannel to push pages between the two sites.

Built a second example workflow that searches for pages about to be unpublished and gives the owner the chance to extend it.
You can set a time limit between loops in WWF
Can debug workflow through normal web process

Content Channel & Page Providers (Magnus Strale)

Content Channel

Import pages and files
Allows one way updating
Requires configuration
Pages and files

Page Providers

Data resides in original store
Fully integrated in EPiServer
LocalPageProvider and RemotePageProvider in EPi CMS R2
Requires Enterprise license
Requires coding and configuration
Pages only

Sharepoint Connector

One way communication initiated by sharepoint
No support for access rights
GUI for configuration

EPiServer Partner Summit 2008

2008-07-02T08:07:00.003+12:00

I know it's a bit late but as promised I've written up some notes on the EPiServer Partner Summit 08. Just a few bullet points on some of the interesting topics. This is more for those that couldn't make it and a refresher for myself.

Overview and Roadmap

The new product focus areas

Core
Connectors - sharepoint, CRM, salesforce etc
Packages (see below)
Content Creation/Admin - user centric, power & simplicity
Enterprise Functionality - enterprise content integration, high performance

Three new product packages; Create+, Relate+ and Engage+ containing both EPiServer and EPiMore products but all supported through EPiServer.

Create+
X3, ImageVault, Interactive Scene, EPiServer Mail

Relate+
EPiCommunity, EPiMail, Connect for Sharepoint, EPiServer MSN, Tag clouds, Personal Presentation

Engage+
Warm website tools
Action Channel

Also coming

Enhancements to EPiStore and EPiBooking
EPiServer community
EPiMore future focus areas; mobile, e-commerce, translation, reporting, SEO, search

Update

2008-06-05T07:35:00.004+12:00

I have to apologise as this blog has been rather quiet for awhile. As most of you that read this blog know (since I met with you in Sweden last week!) I have accepted a position with EPiServer UK. It's a great opportunity for me and I have already learnt so much in the month I have been there, including working with my first implementation of x3.

Last week I had the pleasure of attending the EPiServer partner summit in Stockholm. It was a great 4 days with some interesting sessions and a lot of networking. It was fantastic meeting up with a lot of people I have talked with but never met. It's always nice finally meeting in person. And I appreciated all those that chatted with me for the first time and answered my various questions. I will be posting some excerpts from the conference soon but I actually jumped on here because I found a neat tool that I just had to mention.

If you ever come across the frustrating situation where you have a VS 2008 solution you just want to have a look at and you only have VS 2005 installed but you really don't have the time to try and source out VS 2008 (or can't install on the machine) for whatever reason you can use this nifty tool: http://home.hot.rr.com/graye/Articles/ProjectConverter.htm
It's simply a converter that converts your solution files from 08 back to 05. How handy... :)

The Next Adventure

2008-03-20T10:41:00.003+13:00

Sadly, today is my last day at Intergen. I am embarking on my big OE and will be leaving New Zealand in just over a week. My adventures begin in South East Asia (Thailand & Vietnam) before I arrive in London at the end of April.

So this blog is going to be very quiet for a little while till I'm settled down again. If you want to keep up with my travels you can find my personal travel blog here: http://racheltravel.blogspot.com/

Once I have landed in London I will be looking for contract work, preferably in the EPiServer space. If you know of any positions available feel free to message me through my msn link on the side of this blog. Location is not an issue, I am happy to work anywhere in the UK.

I just want to also say a big thank you to everyone out there who has been reading my blog and who have supported me over the last few years.

Talk again soon
Rachel

Error during setup

2008-03-07T10:12:00.004+13:00

Was involved in the recent setup of an EPiServer test VM and during installation of a sample site we were getting this error on the setup page when it loads the browser:

Exception: Unable to generate a temporary class (result=1). error CS2001: Source file 'C:\WINDOWS\TEMP\tc4s4ocu.0.cs' could not be found error CS2008: No inputs specified []

Determined the error was due to a permissions problem which caused the file not to be placed in the temp directory in the first place. We needed to ensure that the local asp.net account had read/write permissions to C:\Windows\temp

Menus & EPi5

2008-03-03T08:48:00.004+13:00

In older versions of EPiServer it was difficult to create menus based on clean nested lists e.g.

<ul>
<li></li>
<li></li>
<ul class="selected">
<li></li>
<li class="selected"></li>
</ul>
<li></li>
<ul>

In the past I utilised code for a custom menu control I found on the developer forums (apologies, I can not find the link again so cannot reference it here).

However, now in EPi 5 the Page Tree control contains two new templates which makes creating these types of menus a breeze:

Check out <IndentTemplate> and <UnindentTemplate> within the PageTree control

Back to EPiServer

2008-02-27T08:50:00.004+13:00

After a good few months off EPiServer, in order to work on a MOSS WCM project, I am very happy to find myself back on EPiServer, building an Intranet site for Coca Cola Amatil.

This project has one other interesting aspect to it, in that go live is set for 1 April so we have only 3 weeks to develop the site and 2 weeks for UAT, content loading and deployment.

It is actually fantastic timing as I am sadly leaving Intergen after 2 1/2 years with the company. My final day is Thursday 20th March when I'll be heading off overseas on my big OE. I start in south east asia for a month and then arrive in the UK at the end of April. I'll update on this closer to the time and provide a link to my personal travel blog.

Finishing this last EPiServer 5 project will be a nice little send off for me as I've been looking forward to completing my first version 5 site. So, I better get back to it.. I'm on a tight schedule :)

Now you can message me straight from my blog

2008-02-12T16:48:00.000+13:00

Microsoft have provided the ability to include messenger on your blog. Simply click on the green button in the "Message Me" panel on the right and you'll be directly interacting with me on messenger!

If you want to use this yourself follow the instructions here

EPiServer CMS 5 SP1 Released

2008-01-23T08:04:00.000+13:00

EPiServer CMS 5 SP1 has been released. You can get more details here:

http://www.episerver.com/en/EPiServer_Knowledge_Center/Documentation/Release-Notes/Release-Notes---EPiServer-CMS-5-SP1/

WatiN Tips and Tricks

2007-11-23T09:08:00.001+13:00

I've realised that in my last WatiN post I didn't actually explain what it is for those who haven't used it before.

So just briefly, WatiN was inspired by WatiR and is used to perform front end web application testing. WatiN is coded in .net languages and it provides a mechanism to automatically load Internet Explorer, find controls and perform actions and then assert conditions. You can find out more info here: http://watin.sourceforge.net/

Ok now thats done, here is my tips for the week:

Problem:

Each time I load a test I want to run it in a new process so my session information is cleared

Solution:

With version 1.2 of WatiN there is a new argument to allow you to start IE in a new process:

IE ie = new IE(someUrlToGoTo, true))

Problem:

I want to obtain a collection of fields. For example, I have a repeater which contains a text field and I don't know how many repeater items may be returned but I want to grab all text fields.

Solution:

Use a filter to get a collection

TextFieldCollection valueTextFields = browser.TextFields.Filter(Find.ById(new Regex("ValueTextBox")));

Problem:

I want to find a field but its type isn't available in WatiN

Solution:

Use the Element object

Element item1 = ie.Element("li", Find.ById("item1"));

Problem:

I don't want the Internet Explorer windows used during testing to be visible to the user

Solution:

Change the IE setting

IE.Settings.MakeNewIeInstanceVisible = false; // default is true

Help EPiServer prioritse their development

2007-11-20T15:17:00.000+13:00

EPiServer has kindly provided us with a way to voice our opinion on what future features we see are most important.

Fill out the survey http://www.episerver.com/en/Surveys/Help-us-prioritize-functionality/
and select the top 5 out of 20 features.

Here's my pics:
2. Change page type for a page
(allow you to switch a page to a different page type and match up properties)
4. Drag and drop sorting in tree structure
(so you don't have to go through every edit tab to change the sort index!)
7. Shortcut indication in tree
A simple request but beneficial for editors and during training
14. Search behavior report
(list of the most frequently used search words, and words with no results)
I have had this asked from almost every client
18. Check broken links
(list of broken links - both internal and external)
I get this one requested on every RFP we get through the door

WatiN Testing Pattern

2007-11-12T16:24:00.000+13:00

In my latest project I am utilising WatiN to perform my website testing. This is not the first time I have used it in a project but it is the largest test project I've had to create and I've come across a couple of challenges.

Early on I realised my code was becoming increasingly difficult to manage and well rather messy due to all the control find declarations that existed within my tests. So I decided to see if anyone had implemented a nice pattern for WatiN tests that they could recommend. And low and behold I came across a couple and I have included them as references as the bottom of this blog. There are slight variations for both and undoubtedly you will vary your own to suit the situation you are working with but the underlying principals are the same.

First of all we create a page class for every page of our website. This page class is going to contain all the controls that we need to access on our page. The page class is going to inherit from the IE object and instantiates itself using the correct url. Let's look at an example


public class BaseModelPage : IE
    {
           public const string PreConfiguredModelURL = "/BaseModel.aspx";

           public BaseModelPage() : base (SharePointSiteFixture.Site.Url + PreConfiguredModelURL){}

    public Button AddToQuoteButton
    {
       get{ return Button(Find.ById(new Regex("AddToRequestButton"))); }
    }

    public Button EditSpecButton
    {
       get{ return Button(Find.ById(new Regex("EditSpecButton"))); }
    }
}

From here its a matter of removing all the control find code you had in your tests, reference the new page class and now our tests are clean, easy to read and is a true representation of what we're testing.

So here is what it looks like after the cleanup


[SetUp]]
public void SetUp()
        {
            page = new BaseModelPage();
       }

[Test]
public void AddQuoteAndEditSpecButtonsAreHidden()
{
  Assert.That(!page.AddToQuoteButton.Exists);
  Assert.That(!page.EditSpecButton.Exists);
}

We can also abstract out common scenarios or workflows out to the classes also. For example if there are some textfields we need to fill out multiple times to cover off a couple of test scenarios then we'll pull this code into a method in our page class and simply reference it from our test. Again, our tests are becoming more clean and simple. Lets look at another test that calls one of these methods.

[Test]
        public void SubmittingValuesHidesConfigureFormShowsButtons()
        {
            page.SubmitValues();

            Assert.That(!page.ConfigureForm.Exists);
            Assert.That(page.AddToQuoteButton.Exists);
            Assert.That(page.EditSpecButton.Exists);
        }

Another thing we can do is extend our page classes further to handle moving between pages. This is useful when you have a transactional website and you need to test page sequence. In this scenario we add another constructor which accepts an IE instance. Then we can call this constructor from another page class in order to return the new page.

public QuoteRequestPage(IE instance): base(instance.Uri){}


internal QuoteRequestPage GoToQuoteRequestPage()
        {
            RequestQuoteButton.Click();
            return new QuoteRequestPage(this);
        }

So that pretty much sums it up. I certainly recommend following a pattern like this as the maintainability of your code is greatly increased and your tests become clean and readable.

Ref1 - James Avery
Ref2 - Richard Griffin

EPiServer announces new EMVP program

2007-10-15T08:59:00.000+13:00

Mikael Runhem has announced on his research blog the introduction of the new EMVP - The EPiServer Most Valued Professional Program.

The requirements to become an EMVP are:

Very high skills in EPiServer solution development.
To be able to leverage their personal expertise to other developers in blogs and sample code.
To have witten at least one high-class technical blog article about EPiServer with top ratings.
You also need to be invited by at least three EPiServer staff members

And to maintain EMVP status you need to publish at least one high-class technical blog article about EPiServer at the official EMVP blog with top ratings every 60 days.

This is a very exciting opportunity and I am happy to see EPiServer bringing in a program like this. For more information about the benefits check out the blog here - Mikes Blog

Lorem Ipsum Generator

2007-10-12T16:48:00.001+13:00

I use this little tool all the time and thought I should share it with the rest of you.

It's a generator for Lorem Ipsum dummy text http://www.lipsum.com/

CSSVista Tool

2007-10-11T08:25:00.000+13:00

A friend at work put me on to this very cool free tool called CSSVista. It allows you to edit css against a live site and see the results in IE and Firefox simultaneously.

http://litmusapp.com/cssvista

It's a pretty basic tool, you make some changes to your css on the left and it displays on the right (no html changes available) however if you're like me, you no doubt have many occasion where you just can't seem to get your css to do what you want and this tool will allow you to play around till you get it right.

You can also disable css & images in one go to see the affect in both browsers, do some resolution resizing and outline elements.

EPiServer CMS 5 Released

2007-10-10T08:12:00.000+13:00

The much anticipated EPiServer CMS 5 was released in september and I for one am very excited about working with this new version. We have two new projects coming up at Intergen so look out for some interesting posts as I learn the ins and outs of this new version.

For download details: Download EPiServer CMS

TFS and Fiddler

2007-07-19T15:10:00.000+12:00

If you are having problems with TFS and you use Fiddler then check out this post detailing the errors TFS encounters when Fiddler is running.

*Thanks to Duncan for the info

EPiServer CMS 5 RC3 Released

2007-07-06T09:20:00.001+12:00

The next release candidate for EPiServer CMS has just been released.

You can download RC3 from here:

http://www.episerver.com/en/EPiServer_Knowledge_Center/Download2/EPiServer-CMS-5---RC3/

Alternatively, EPiServer have provided two Virtual Image downloads;

Windows Vista with EPiServer CMS 5 RC3 (SDK installation) and Visual Studio 2005 and
Windows 2003 Server with EPiServer CMS 5 RC3 (manager installation)

You can register for both of these downloads here:

http://www.episerver.com/en/EPiServer_Knowledge_Center/Download2/EPiServer-CMS-5---RC3/EPiServer-CMS-5-RC3---Virtual-PC-Image/

Sharepoint Integration Module

2007-06-29T14:47:00.000+12:00

EPiServer are currently developing an integration module with SharePoint 2007/WSS 3.0.

Phase 1 will see the ability to publish content from SharePoint to EPiServer with Phase 2 the ability to present content within SharePoint from EPiServer.

This module is being built to run with EPiServer CMS.

More information can be found here including how to sign up for the beta testing:
http://www.episerver.com/en/EPiServer_Knowledge_Center/Developer-Forum2/EPiServer-Developer-Forums-/SharePoint-EPiServer-Integration-Module/Info-SharePoint-EPiServer-Integration-module/

Fiddler

2007-06-19T15:11:00.000+12:00

Yesterday I was having some performance problems with one of my MCMS websites and a workmate pointed me towards a tool he found. It's called Fiddler.

Fiddler is a http debugger which logs all http requests between your computer and the Internet. You can then check out the http traffic and inspect ingoing/outgoing data.

Quite an interesting tool, check it out here: http://www.fiddlertool.com/fiddler/

It's ALIVE

2007-06-18T10:18:00.000+12:00

After only 3 failed installations I finally have an EPiServer CMS 5 demo site up and running - hurray!

I learnt quite a few things while completing this installation.

First of all you can install the site using either the EPiServer manager install (like we're used to with EPiServer 4.*) or by using the extensions within studio to create a new project. I found the EPiServer manager install more useful this time around as it installs some sample templates. For future projects a clean install through studio will be beneficial.

The EPiServer manager install can fail a few times and the forums are a good place to find resolutions to problems during this step. My issues were due to dll access (not rolling back completely after a failed install) and sql server 2005 problems. A very common error is remote connections not enabled:

An error has occurred while establishing a connection to the server. When connecting to SQL Server 2005, this failure may be caused by the fact that under the default settings SQL Server does not allow remote connections.

For this issue you need to configure remote connections within the Surface Area Configuration Tool. The following is a good resource: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/914277

This documentation (http://www.episerver.com/en/EPiServer_Knowledge_Center/Documentation/Release-Notes-CMS-Beta/EPiServer-CMS-5-RC1-Revised-Documentation/Setting-Up-a-New-EPiServer-Site-with-Visual-Studio/) details how to set an episerver site with visual studio. If you install the site through the manager you can skip the first few steps although you will want to make sure your project and solution are all created and compiling correctly at this point.
The documentation is also available within the SDK. The EPiServer CMS 5 SDK can be found within your Start/All Programs if you have used the sdk installation package.

From here you can follow the documentation on Creating Roles and Users in the above link.

Note: there is one important thing missing from the documentation. Before you create the roles and users you need to run the ASP .NET SQL Server Registration Tool - Aspnet_regsql.exe (see http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms229862(vs.80).aspx). This will allow you to install the database elements for the membership and role management. There has been mention that you can install your users and roles anywhere but for ease in your demo site I suggest installing on your demo database.

Once the reg tool has been run you can follow the steps to create the roles and users.

With all the hard setup parts done you can now login using sitename/util/login.aspx and the user you just created. I had a few configuration issues at this point. One of them was I had to have the entry applicationId="/LM/W3SVC/10/Root" as an attribute of my site tag:

site applicationId="/LM/W3SVC/10/Root" description="Example Site"

Afterwards, the site compiled correctly, I could login to admin and edit modes and I finally had a working demo site to play with.

- Workflow foundation, themes and role management here I come :)

Download EPiServer CMS 5 RC2 now

2007-06-15T09:54:00.000+12:00

As anyone in the EPiServer community will know, EPiServer CMS 5 is the next generation of the EPiServer project and the release candidates are here. A couple of weeks ago RC2 was made available for download.

You can find the release notes and other interesting information here: http://www.episerver.com/en/EPiServer_Knowledge_Center/Documentation/Release-Notes-CMS-Beta/

There are a lot of changes in EPi5 and it'll take too long for me to list them all here, but in the next couple of months I plan on researching all of them and listing any interesting points and things I've learnt. I'm especially interested in the new integration with .net framework 3.0 and the windows workflow foundation. I consistently have questions about workflows from existing and potentional clients and I'm excited to see what the new workflow components can do.

I'm interested to hear from anyone else who is researching EPi5 and how you are going with installs and getting it all setup.

Hello World

2007-06-15T08:46:00.000+12:00

My first blog entry... incredibly exciting. I have been thinking of starting a blog for awhile now and I've realised thinking is not doing so here I am.

I have been developing with EPiServer, a content management system (www.episerver.com) for probably over a year now and I have found a true passion for the web industry. This blog is going to feature all things EPiServer -

News
Code Samples
Interesting tid-bits
Tips and Tricks

Just to make things interesting expect to see me throw in the odd post around other web technologies or random thoughts I have about development work in general.

Enjoy, please feel free to post a comment or thought. See you again soon :)