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Navigation Menu and Universal Viewer Webpart

Fri, 22 Feb 2013 17:47:29 GMT

Recently, I was tasked to help create multi-level main navigation within the master page of a website. After a little investigation and finding that the CSS List Menu would not work for my implementation, I concluded that it would be the perfect opportunity to use either a Universal Viewer or a Universal Viewer with custom query; both of which I implemented with Hierarchical Transformations.

I. Universal Viewer

Add the Universal Viewer web part to your master page, set the appropriate content and content filtering properties (just as you would for a CMS Repeater) and then check the boxes for Load hierarchical data, Use default hierarchical order and make sure that the Hierarchical display mode is set to: Inner. Select the 'OK' button and navigate to the Site Manager to define a new Hierarchical Transformation.

HTML5/WAI-ARIA compliant navigation

Thu, 10 Jan 2013 15:07:54 GMT

This issue probably requires much more investigation and we'll get to that in the future but busy bees we are so here is a quick post on updating the markup in your navigation menus.

Document Retrieval Macro

Tue, 09 Oct 2012 16:27:15 GMT

With the introduction of the K# syntax in Kentico CMS version 6, the capability of macros has been greatly enhanced. Now, rather than returning simple strings, you can return objects and...

Kentico 7 - Little Things That Make a Big Difference

Mon, 24 Sep 2012 17:36:21 GMT

After attending the Kentico Connection 2012 in Denver last week, I’m excited about all the new features and improvements that Kentico 7 has to offer. In this post I would like to point out some of...

HTML5 markup in Kentico 6 - Part 1

Tue, 14 Aug 2012 21:18:50 GMT

There are many exciting features that have been introduced and adopted in the latest HTML specification that cover handling of rich media, images, offline storage, etc. These can be very sexy topics for clients to discuss but my favorite specifications are those affecting our basic HTML markup.

How to handle search result URLs for document types with no detail view

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 21:47:00 GMT

Have you ever clicked on a search result's URL only to see the framework of the site and a blank content area? I recently encountered this with a site I was working on. The...

Caching in with Kentico

Fri, 26 Aug 2011 16:47:57 GMT

Caching is an important part of website performance. Kentico has caching built right into its web parts, controls, and site settings making it easy to take advantage of its caching capabilities. You can read in depth about Kentico caching in a post by Martin Hejtmanek (http://devnet.kentico.com/Blogs/Martin-Hejtmanek/April-2009/Deep-Dive---Kentico-CMS-Caching.aspx). In this post I’m going to show you how to utilize Kentico’s caching API in your code. We will then abstract that code into a utility class that will simplify our methods and reduce redundancy.

Allow smart searches on document properties only

Thu, 25 Aug 2011 07:11:10 GMT

Using smart search, if you need to search by a filter condition (without providing content), you need to add the following appSetting key:

Use own created WebPartField-Values as macros directly in a container

Thu, 28 Jul 2011 12:57:55 GMT

Sometimes It could be very usefull to use several values directly in a container.

Example: {%ContainerTitle%}
{%MyOwnValue%}

I made an small tutorial where we create a dynamic webpart or widget without editing any code of a default webpart in VisualStudio.

Multiple Websites and Robots.txt, no problem!

Wed, 27 Jul 2011 22:43:06 GMT

Well, I should have included a disclaimer that this developer tip requires the use of IIS 7 and the rewrite module. If you're unfamiliar with the rewrite module, you can find a brief introduction here.

I run into this problem when creating multiple websites within a single Kentico installation. I had a tough time finding the right solution for my application. I did find a solution in the Kentico forums that suggested adding a robots.txt file as a file type in the CMS Desk and using custom url extensions. More details of this solution can be found here. But, I also found that if your website isn't running under Integrated Mode, using the custom url extensions gets a bit messy. Therefore, I decided to look further into using the rewrite module.

A more user (and developer) friendly FCKEditor

Tue, 31 May 2011 17:12:51 GMT

One of the selling points of a content management system has always been “If you can use Microsoft Word, you can maintain a website.” FCKEditor is one of the primary touch points customers will use to interact with your Kentico application and if it isn’t tuned properly you and your customer will get frustrated. Ideally we spend some time to educate the customer on basic HTML (which if you’re looking for training, DATA, Inc. has incredible online Kentico training) but in the end what they see on screen is what they expect. This WYSIWYG approach has to be balanced with well formed HTML.

Following are a few simple tweaks I’d recommend implementing before any site content is loaded.

Many-to-Many relationships in the Kentico CMS Content Tree

Thu, 19 May 2011 17:34:32 GMT

For a few of my Kentico implementations, I've encountered the need for a Many-to-Many relationship for documents that exist in the content tree. Documents within the content tree are stored in a hierarchy and have a parent-child relationship. There are a few different ways to achieve a many-to-many relationship while storing documents in the tree, but this tip will just describe a quick work-around using a bit of sql and Kentico's query repeater. I'll first discuss an example of where the issue emerges and then the work-around.

User control setup in Kentico

Mon, 11 Apr 2011 23:40:29 GMT

Often times when adding custom controls to Kentico I will choose to use a plain user control over creating a new web part. The benefit of creating a web part is that you can allow the designer/content editor to set properties on your control from the design interface. If you do not require this ability it is simpler to add your user control using the "User control" web part located under the "General" section. All you need to do is set the virtual path to your user control (e.g. ~/Controls/MyControl.ascx). One thing you should add to any control/web part that executes code on load is a "StopProcessing" check.

Custom Cart Step - Part 1

Tue, 07 Dec 2010 23:16:00 GMT

When setting up a checkout process for your Kentico ecommerce solution, the "Generate default process" button will create a common checkout experience. There are times, however, when you need to collect additional data during this process but you want to leave the default processes as intact as possible. In this post, I’ll explain how you can add a step and carry that data through to the order creation.

How to set default home(start) page in Kentico CMS

Mon, 06 Dec 2010 09:19:29 GMT

In this I am going show how to set start page in kentico CMS. it will be useful, if you create you own template and you want set start page. In you template by default start page will be your master page.

How to Install Kentico CMS for ASP.NET With WebMatrix

Mon, 06 Dec 2010 09:07:16 GMT

How to Install Kentico CMS for ASP.NET With WebMatrix :VID

Using SQL Profiler with Kentico

Sat, 04 Dec 2010 00:01:31 GMT

This is a quick tip, but might save you some time and sanity if you are using SQL Profiler with Kentico. SQL Profiler is a tool that will let you see the SQL queries that are being sent to the database. This is a useful debugging tool when you are not getting the results you expect. The problem is, when using the connection from your Kentico site you will not see the SQL queries. This is an easy fix; we just need to modify the connection string in the web.config. Set the value for MultipleActiveResultSets to false. Now you should start seeing the SQL queries being sent to the database.

Gettin' Freaky with Transformations!

Wed, 24 Nov 2010 18:48:18 GMT

I wouldn't recommend writing large amounts of code within transformations; usually, I try to keep them as simple as possible so that front-end developers find them easy to work with. However, when you need to, this tip may be helpful.

It's important to remember Asp.net's Page Lifecycle when implementing code within a transformation. If you pick an event that's too early within the life cycle, you'll probably end up getting a null exception. When scripting within a transformation, you need to be familiar with which tags to use.

SQL Dropdown List for a Document Type

Thu, 11 Nov 2010 00:49:51 GMT

This is just a simple tip of how to create a dropdown list for your document type with a little SQL fanciness.

For my implementation, I needed a dropdown list of States for my custom document Type. One solution was to create a text column called state and enter as the Options:

OO;Select State
AK;Alaska
AK;Alaska
AZ;Arizona
AR;Arkansas
CA;California

Adding Google fonts to your web site

Thu, 04 Nov 2010 18:38:16 GMT

The Google Fonts Directory and API is an offering of free web fonts that can dramatically improve the look and appearance of your website without licensing and purchasing fonts. Refer to http://code.google.com/webfonts for more information on the fonts that are available and alternative implementation methods.

Terms and conditions check box in bizform (Kentico CMS) with required

Thu, 28 Oct 2010 05:10:33 GMT

Create a Terms and Conditions check box in a bizform (Kentico CMS) that is required. Bizform is the one of the best features of Kentico CMS. We can create one Bizform in the Free edition. We can create bizforms with just mouse clicks and few inputs (Like display name …). No code :)

Extending the User Profile

Fri, 22 Oct 2010 22:30:08 GMT

In some cases you may have a need to add extended data to the user’s profile. The extended profile data is stored in the CMS_UserSettings table. To add a field to this table, navigate to CMS Site Manager > Development > System tables and click edit on the CMS_UserSettings table.

Setting up a clean install of a Kentico 5.5 site

Fri, 15 Oct 2010 21:40:29 GMT

Kentico comes pre-installed with starter sites that include sample document types, templates, and layouts. These items exist to give you a starting point and demonstrate features of Kentico. In most cases, when building a custom site, you will want to install Kentico without these extraneous items. Having only items that pertain to your site in the CMS will make for a better user experience for your CMS Desk and Site Manager users. I will walk you through the installation process, highlighting the sections in which you can choose to minimize the items that will be installed on your site.

Setting icons for new document types in Kentico

Fri, 15 Oct 2010 21:06:31 GMT

The first thing you should do after creating a new document type in Kentico is give that document type a unique icon. Icons help content editors visually distinguish between different document types when browsing the tree and creating new documents.

Find Closest Ancestor Method

Fri, 15 Oct 2010 19:47:17 GMT

The find closest ancestor method is a handy method that recursively traverses up the tree from a given node until it finds a document with the class type you have specified. For example you might have news items that live under various page menu items in order to categorize them (e.g. Tech News, Global News, etc.) and you want to display the section name (page menu item's title) above the news title on the news item. You can use the find closest ancestor method to get the page menu item that is above the current news item and display the page menu item's title.