Unfortunately, Sitecore’s 404 pages returns a 200 Response header, which corresponds to ‘found’.

The only way to implement a proper 404 in Sitecore is to add a custom pipeline which will return a 404 response header and  then output the content of your custom 404 page. If you want more details on this you can read this blog post, the code below will provide a similar solution.

The above image shows the response header we want to see when we hit a 404 page.

1. We need to add our out pipeline intercept to appear before the ‘ExecuteRequest’ Sitecore pipeline:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
    <configuration xmlns:x="http://www.sitecore.net/xmlconfig/">
    <pipelines>
      <httpRequestBegin>
        <processor x:before="processor[@type='Sitecore.Pipelines.HttpRequest.ExecuteRequest, Sitecore.Kernel']" type="CmsSource.Utils.Pipelines.Custom404Reolver, CmsSource.Utils"/>
      </httpRequestBegin>
    </pipelines>
    </sitecore>
</configuration>

2. The key section of code for the pipeline:

HttpContext context = HttpContext.Current;
// Send headers
context.Response.TrySkipIisCustomErrors = true;
context.Response.StatusCode = 404;
context.Response.StatusDescription = "Page not found";

// Get content of 404 page and send to the client
try
{
    String str404Url = "http://" + context.Request.ServerVariables["SERVER_NAME"] + Settings.ItemNotFoundUrl;
    WebClient client = new WebClient();
    client.Headers.Add(HttpRequestHeader.UserAgent, "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 6.0)");
    String str404Content = client.DownloadString(str404Url);

    context.Response.Write(str404Content);
    context.Response.End();

}
catch (Exception ex)
{
    Log.Error("Problem loading 404 page content", ex, this);
}

The full .cs file can be downloaded below. There was some redirect code that needed to be added to make sure that Sitecore’s default functionality was still working (e.g. redirects to login page when trying to request secure pages).

Download Code Here

Add multiple sites to the publish:end cache clearing config entry:

    <events timingLevel="custom">
      <event name="publish:end">
        <handler type="Sitecore.Publishing.HtmlCacheClearer, Sitecore.Kernel" method="ClearCache">
          <sites hint="list">
            <patch:delete />
          </sites>
          <sites hint="list">
            <site>website</site>
            <site>site1</site>
            <site>site2</site>
          </sites>
        </handler>
      </event>

  </events>

Modify the keep-alive location:

    <scheduling>
      <agent type="Sitecore.Tasks.UrlAgent" method="Run" interval="00:30:00">
        <param desc="url">http://mysite/sitecore/service/keepalive.aspx</param>
      </agent>
    </scheduling>

Remove .ashx extension from media items and keep original media extension (e.g. .pdf, .jpg)

      <settings>
          <setting name="Media.RequestExtension">
              <patch:attribute name="value"></patch:attribute>
          </setting>
      </settings>

Patch entry to set the DATA folder location

    <sc.variable name="dataFolder">
      <patch:attribute name="value">H:\Development\CmsS\TestProj\trunk\Data</patch:attribute>
    </sc.variable>

Create a class to fit into the <renderField> pipeline, this will be patched in just after the GetFieldValue operation.

using System.Linq;

using System.Collections.Generic;

using Sitecore.Diagnostics;

using Sitecore.Pipelines.RenderField;

namespace CmsS.Common.Pipelines

{

    public class TokenReplacer

    {

        public void Process(RenderFieldArgs args)

        {

            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(args, “args”);

            //I store my tokens in a comma delemetered list somewhere, you might want to do the same, its hardcoded 

            //here for example only

            List<string> tokens = “{FIRSTNAME},{LASTNAME}”.Split(‘,’).ToList();

            string originalValue = args.Result.FirstPart;

            var usedTokens = tokens.Where(X => originalValue.Contains(X));

            if (usedTokens.Count() > 0)

            {

                Sitecore.Security.UserProfile profile = Sitecore.Context.User.Profile as Sitecore.Security.UserProfile;

                if (profile != null)

                {

                    string[] name = profile.FullName.Split(‘ ’);

                    foreach (string token in usedTokens)

                    {

                        switch (token)

                        {

                            case “{FIRSTNAME}”:

                                originalValue = originalValue.Replace(token, name.First());

                                break;

                            case “{LASTNAME}”:

                                originalValue = originalValue.Replace(token, name.Last());

                                break;

                        }

                    }

                    args.Result.FirstPart = originalValue;                    

                }

            }

        }

    }

}

Add your patch file entry:

You are good to go.

This will work with most versions of sitecore 6.5 and down.

Here are the steps:

1. Delete this whole section from existing web.config, the code snippet can be found right at the bottom:

2. Replace this part:

With this:

Compile and you are now good to go!
I have uploaded the .NET4 config (without MVC) for Sitecore 6.5.0 rev 110818 here if anyone wants it:
http://www.cmssource.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Web.config.NET4

Scenario:

We have a client that relies heavily on google analytics to track campaigns. Lets assume they have an online campaign, as well as an offline campaign with the Sun newspaper. Both mediums will link through to their own alias that point to http://www.site.com/2-for1:

1. http://www.site.com/sun2-for1
2. http://www.site.com/online-2-for1

In order to get google analytics to register the campaigns for the correct medium, we need to add some query string vars according to the definition here: http://support.google.com/googleanalytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en-GB&answer=55578

We can achieve this by responding with a 301 redirect with the new URL’s when the user types in one of the aliased URL’s above. For example, if the user types the sun campaign URL #1 (http://www.site.com/sun2-for1) above, we want them to be redirected to: http://www.site.com/sun2-for1?utm_source=sun%2Bnews&utm_medium=offline&utm_campaign=2-for-1

Solution:

Add a single line text field ‘Custom querystring‘ to the alias template located in the master DB: /sitecore/templates/System/Alias:

We need to patch the pipelie before the Sitecore.Pipelines.HttpRequest.AliasResolver is called:

Now we create our pipeline CustomAliasResolver.cs which:

1. Checks that we are dealing with an alias.
2. If yes to step one and the ‘Custom querystring’ field contains a value, then
3. Generate the new URL from the current URL and append the custom querystring, add an extra query string flag: proc=1 (we check for this flag, so that we know that we have already processed the custom query string).
4. Perform a 301 redirect to the newly generated URL.

To create the alias in the example above, we would simply add a new alias item ‘sun2-for1‘ which will point at ‘home/2-for-1‘ and add ‘utm_source=sun%2Bnews&utm_medium=offline&utm_campaign=2-for-1′ to the Custom quesrystring field:

This code has been tested with sitecore 6.5 (should work for all version of sitecore 5.3 upwards) and will work alongside existing aliases. If the field ‘Custom querystring’ is left blank, the alias will be handled as a regular sitecore alias with no redirect.

One BIG problem, even though you can store dictionary items on all databases, sitecore only indexes the items within the CORE database. This basically makes the Translate function useless for most high-end solutions that often have CD servers that do not communicate with the original core DB.

On the plus side, you can copy most of sitecore’s dictionary code and generate your own to match the content of the web DB. NOTE: I will soon be testing this in a proper multi-server environment, at the moment this solution has only been tested in a development environment.

Download the code here:  Translate.zip

For this, you have to:

1. Make your own Translate class that writes to a different .dat file and reads the WEB db.
2. Make your own ItemEventHandler that will rebuild your dictionary when the dictionary entry items are deleted or saved, this too is an almost straight copy of sitecore’s Sitecore.Globalization.ItemEventHandler class. You then use a patch file to sneak your events in after Sitecore’s own dictionary events.

You end up having a fairly elegent solution to the problem, see the code below:

Here is the ItemEventHandler:

Finally the patch file to make it all work:

This has been a result of the posts in the following discussion with  Rickard Andersson within SDN:

http://sdn.sitecore.net/forum//ShowPost.aspx?PostID=41386

Please note, the namespace of my project is mm.virginactive.common, so in order to access a translated item I need to fetch:

mm.virginactive.common.Globalization.Translate.Text(“Dictionarykey”);

You should update the namespace to be relevant to your project.

4.6 How to: Remove References to the Master Database.

You can download the SwitchMasterToWeb.config file here and place it the /App_Config/Includes folder.

If you have Analytics running, you may end up seeing this error (especially if you try to view the site from outside the server that is hosting):

Exception: System.InvalidOperationException
Message: Could not find configuration node: databases/database[@id='master']
Source: Sitecore.Kernel
   at Sitecore.Diagnostics.Assert.IsTrue(Boolean condition, String message)
   at Sitecore.Configuration.Factory.GetConfigNode(String xpath, Boolean assert)
   at Sitecore.Configuration.Factory.CreateObject(String configPath, String[] parameters, Boolean assert)
   at Sitecore.Configuration.Factory.GetDatabase(String name, Boolean assert)
   at Sitecore.Configuration.Factory.GetDatabase(String name)
   at Sitecore.Analytics.Tracker.get_DefinitionDatabase()
   at Sitecore.Analytics.Pipelines.TrafficTypes.OrganicBranded.Process(TrafficTypeArgs args)
   at (Object , Object[] )
   at Sitecore.Pipelines.CorePipeline.Run(PipelineArgs args)
   at Sitecore.Analytics.Pipelines.CreateVisits.SetTrafficType.Process(CreateVisitArgs args)
   at (Object , Object[] )
   at Sitecore.Pipelines.CorePipeline.Run(PipelineArgs args)
   at Sitecore.Analytics.Pipelines.InitializeTracker.Initialize.CreateVisit(HttpContext httpContext, Visitor visitor)
   at Sitecore.Analytics.Pipelines.InitializeTracker.Initialize.Process(InitializeTrackerArgs args)
   at (Object , Object[] )
   at Sitecore.Pipelines.CorePipeline.Run(PipelineArgs args)
   at Sitecore.Analytics.Pipelines.StartTracking.InitializeTracker.Process(StartTrackingArgs args)
   at (Object , Object[] )
   at Sitecore.Pipelines.CorePipeline.Run(PipelineArgs args)
   at Sitecore.Analytics.Tracker.StartTracking()
   at Sitecore.Analytics.Pipelines.HttpRequest.StartAnalytics.Process(RenderLayoutArgs args)
   at (Object , Object[] )
   at Sitecore.Pipelines.CorePipeline.Run(PipelineArgs args)
   at Sitecore.Layouts.PageContext.BuildControlTree(Object sender, EventArgs e)
   at System.Web.UI.Page.OnPreInit(EventArgs e)
   at System.Web.UI.Page.PerformPreInit()
   at System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequestMain(Boolean includeStagesBeforeAsyncPoint, Boolean includeStagesAfterAsyncPoint)

The one issue I had is, if you have analytics enabled, there is a bit of code in analytics that checks for a setting:

This setting does not exist in the Sitecore.Analytics.config file, and for that reason the code always defaulted to master DB and gave an error, for that reason I have added this config setting to the patch file to get everything working (you can just add it to the SwitchmasterToWeb.config):

There are very few reasons to pollute any of the web.config given that everything between the <sitecore></sitecore> tags can be modified via patch files.

I have attempted to share a basic ‘handy’ patch file here which can be used with any new sitecore solution, please let me know if I have missed anything obvious/important.  Most if not all the config entries that are patched here should eventually be patched for any sitecore implementation.  I will attempt to update this post with additional patch files that modify things like HTML caches and item threshold etc.

Note: You will need to replace the values I have entered here with those relevant to your project.

Let’s assume you have a huge collection of items that needs to be segregated into sub-folders because of sheer volume. I will use a Press landing and press articles as an example.

So our content structure will be similar to what is shown in the image.

I have used only years to separate my articles, but depending on the number of articles your site is planning on having, you may want to have a folder structure like yyyy/MMM/dd/article.

Its often a requirement to not show the sub-folder structure in your URL, e.g. for the example below you would want: http://domain.com/press/article-one.aspx

The actual location is  http://domain.com/press/2011/article-one.aspx

in order to achieve this, Add a custom pipeline after ItemResolver. Generate your URL’s so that the links look like the way you want it to look and you are good to go.

Add an include file with the pipeline hack:

Create your ExampleHttpResolver.cs:

Please take into account that this is a very basic example to give you an indication of how this can be done, you may also want to:

1. Add error catching
2. Use a search index if you are dealing with >1500 articles, use this to find the related article instead of an SC query

All we are doing here is fooling sitecore to replace an article as a context item instead of throwing a 404, so your articles will need to have presentation assigned to it.

An alternative approach as mentioned by Karina Apostolides in the forum post is to create an Alias for every news article on item:created, you would also need to handle item:renamed to ensure that the alias is renamed when the item is renamed. The advantage of this method is that GetFriendlyUrl will handle the alias automatically.

There is a newer version of EviBlog since I wrote this post, however the content of this post is relevant for anyone that wants to customise EviBlog to suit their needs.

I have added a few examples here of how EviBlog’s functionality can be modified regardless of the version of sitecore and EviBlog that you are working with.

The hierarchical category functionality on this post can be used together with the custom tree list sitecore field I have posted to complete  the user experience.

Please note that I have not made allowance to cater for page editor compatibility for this example.

INSTALL THE BLOG MODULE

First step is to get an installation of EviBlog running on a sitecore environment, just download and install the Sitecore package from the EviBlog site:

http://svn.sitecore.net/EviBlog/Trunk/EviBlog/Website/data/packages/Eviblog-1.5.zip

One you have successfully installed the module, create a Blog hierarchy wherever you want your blog to reside within your website using the /sitecore/templates/Modules/EviBlog/BlogHome template item.

I wanted my blog to reside under www.mydomain.com/blog so I created a hierarchy within my home page item:

Once you have created a bit of blog content you should be able to view the bare-bones blog. We are now ready to get the source and customise the blog module.

DOWNLOAD THE SOURCE

Once you have the blog going, you can download the source code for the module from:

http://svn.sitecore.net/EviBlog/Trunk/EviBlog

I suggest that you download the code to an independent location, you do not need to worry about incorporating it with your Sitecore solution.

The solution file can be found within the ‘Website’ directory and I had no issued opening this with Visual Studio 2010.

The first thing we want to do is to get the project building, in order to do this we need to update the references within the projects to refer to dlls inside our own Sitecoreroot/bin directory. EviBlog is designed to be used with Sitecore version 6.2, if you are using a different version of Sitecore, the best way to get EviBlog running with your own version of Sitecore is the use the Sitecore.Kernel.dll from that version as a reference to the projects. You can set the copy local attribute to false under the properties of each of the dll’s you referenced

RE-SKINNING

The structure of the Eviblog.Web project should look familiar, it matches the directory structure of your Sitecore root folder.

If you want to make life easier for yourself, you can create an xcopy postbuild event to copy specific folders from the EviBlog.Web project directly into your sitecore root folder. The alternative is to manually copy the changes you have made.

Assuming you are simply interested in re-skinning the EviBlog module to match your requirements, you should be able to get away with modifying some of the files within this project without doing a single build. If this is all you want to do, take a look at the following files:

\Website\sitecore modules\EviBlog\Themes\*.css

MORE COMPLEX CHANGES

We will be making a series of changes and additions to improve the EviBlog module, the goal will be to provide enough examples to allow you to go ahead and make any additions you want to make with confidence.

ALLOW CATEGORY HIERACHY

We will need to perform the following tasks in order to add hierarchical category support:

• Add insert options to the category template to allow easy creation of sub-categories.
• Change the categories renderer to display hierarchy.
• Change the categories field type from a multilist to a tree (allow hierarchical category selection within posts).

Add Category insert option

Simply add an insert item to itself via the Standard Values of the BlogCategory template:

/sitecore/templates/Modules/EviBlog/BlogCategory/__Standard Values

Create a hierarchy of category items within your blog items so that we have something to test against.

This is the end of the easy part.

Change the categories renderer to display hierarchy

Fire-bugging the categories section reveals that a list is used as the HTML output, we want to make this into a nested list that represents our new category hierarchy.

We will need to create an XMLDocument to represent the categories. Look here for a recursive method that will create this hierarchy for us.

Lets create a new helper class within the Sitecore.Modules.Eviblog.Utilities namespace. We can create the methods that generate an XMLDocument from an item hierarchy in there.

The control we are interested in is located within Eviblog.Web/Layouts/Blog/BlogCategories.ascx and the backend .cs can be found here: Sitecore.Modules.Eviblog.UserControls.BlogCategories.cs within the Sitecore.Modules.EviBlog project.

Add a method to Sitecore.Modules.Eviblog.Managers.CategoryManager.cs that will interface with our helper class to retrieve the XMLDocument from the Categories root:

/// <summary> /// Get the categories for the context Blog and returns /// an XmlDocument that represents the category hierarchy. /// </summary> /// <returns></returns> public static XmlDocument GetCategoriesAsXml()
{
    //Get the current item Item Blog = Context.Item;

    //Check if current item equals blogroot if (Blog.TemplateID.ToString() != Settings.Default.BlogTemplateID)
    {
        while (Blog.TemplateID.ToString() != Settings.Default.BlogTemplateID)
        {
            Blog = Blog.Parent;
        }
    }
    Return Sitecore.Modules.Eviblog.Utilities.Helper.GetItemsAsXml(Blog.Axes.GetChild("Categories").Paths.Path);
}

Change the categories renderer to display hierarchy

There are several ways in which we can now display the Category hierarchy in the front end. Some may prefer to use a plain nested <ul>, some people may choose to use a TreeView control.

For this solution we are going to stick with a nested list of hyperlinks, however I have created an example of both a nested list and a TreeView because it is relatively straight forward go with either one after you fetch the items in an XML hierarchy.

Nested List Implementation Option:

Add a <div> with runat=”server” to the frontend sub-layout EviBlog.Web.Layouts.Blog. BlogCategories.ascx :

Modify the backend class Sitecore.Modules.Eviblog.UserControls .BlogCategories.cs :

Declare the HTML Control:

protected System.Web.UI.HtmlControls.HtmlGenericControl categoryMenu;

Populate the HTML Control in the Page_Load method with the XML hierarchy of the Category Items:

protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
        ...
              ListViewCategories.DataSource = CategoryManager.GetCategories();
              ListViewCategories.ItemDataBound += ListViewCategories_ItemDataBound;
              ListViewCategories.DataBind();

docXML = CategoryManager.GetCategoriesAsXml();
XmlNode categoryNode = docXML.SelectSingleNode("descendant::item");
categoryMenu.InnerHtml = String.Format("<h3>{0}</h3><ul id=\"blog-categories\" class=\"sidebar\">{1}</ul>",
                     categoryNode.Attributes["name"].Value,
                     DisplayChildrenAsList(categoryNode));

Create the recursive method to populate the nested list (note this list accepts any depth of items):

// Add the children of this XML node // to this child nodes collection. private void AddTreeViewChildNodes(TreeNodeCollection parent_nodes, XmlNode         xml_node)
{
    // Make the new TreeView node. TreeNode new_node = new TreeNode(xml_node.Attributes["name"].Value);
    new_node.Value = xml_node.Attributes["id"].Value;
    new_node.NavigateUrl = xml_node.Attributes["link"].Value;
    parent_nodes.Add(new_node);

    foreach (XmlNode child_node in xml_node.ChildNodes)
    {
        // Recursively make this node's descendants. AddTreeViewChildNodes(new_node.ChildNodes, child_node);
    }
}

TreeView Control Implementation Option:

Add a basic TreeView Control to the frontend sub-layout EviBlog.Web.Layouts.Blog. BlogCategories.ascx :

<asp:TreeView ID=”TreeViewCategories” runat=”server” />

Modify the backend class Sitecore.Modules.Eviblog.UserControls .BlogCategories.cs :

Declare the TreeView:

protected TreeView TreeViewCategories;

Populate the TreeView in the Page_Load method with the XML hierarchy of the Category Items:

protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
        ...
              ListViewCategories.DataSource = CategoryManager.GetCategories();
              ListViewCategories.ItemDataBound += ListViewCategories_ItemDataBound;
              ListViewCategories.DataBind();

        docXML = CategoryManager.GetCategoriesAsXml();
TreeViewCategories.Nodes.Clear() AddTreeViewChildNodes(TreeViewCategories.Nodes, docXML.SelectSingleNode("descendant::item"));

Add the recursive method to populate the nodes:

// Add the children of this XML node // to this child nodes collection. private void AddTreeViewChildNodes(TreeNodeCollection parent_nodes, XmlNode xml_node)
{
    // Make the new TreeView node. TreeNode new_node = new TreeNode(xml_node.Attributes["name"].Value);
    new_node.Value = xml_node.Attributes["id"].Value;
    new_node.NavigateUrl = xml_node.Attributes["link"].Value;
    parent_nodes.Add(new_node);

    foreach (XmlNode child_node in xml_node.ChildNodes)
    {
        // Recursively make this node's descendants. AddTreeViewChildNodes(new_node.ChildNodes, child_node);
    }
}