Blog

11 Nov 2011 ...

Using config transforms with EPiServer

Config transforms are great for configuration management. This post mentions one approach for applying config transforms to EPiServer configuration files such as episerver.config.

11 Nov 2011 ...

Access denied when accessing Visitor Groups tab in EPiServer

After we upgraded an intranet to EPiServer CMS 6 R2 we discovered that we were not able to access the Visitor Groups tab. Here's a quick note on cause and resolution.

7 Nov 2011 ...

Set default web browser for Visual Studio

This is a reminder of how to change the default browser used when launching a website in Visual Studio.

24 Oct 2011 ...

Visitor groups and custom criteria in EPiServer

In this post we look at how to create new custom criteria for defining visitor groups in EPiServer.

21 Oct 2011 ...

Trying to synchronize data between Excel 2010 and a SharePoint 2007 list

Trying to synchronizing data between Excel 2010 and a SharePoint 2007 list and it is not working. The 2007 Office System Driver: Data Connectivity Components could be your solution.

21 Oct 2011 ...

Switching to TinyMCE after upgrade caused some errors

While doing a major update from CMS 4.62 to CMS 6 R2 I have encountered several of issues, one was that TinyMCE was not activated and working as standard.

18 Oct 2011 ...

See log4net log messages in real-time

This post shows how to make a simple addition to your log4net.config file to make it possible to view log4net messages in real-time.

30 Sep 2011 ...

Check if a dynamic property has been specified on the current page

This post was originally published on EPiServer Labs in February 2009. It gives an example on how to check if a dynamic property has been set explicitly for a specific page.

29 Sep 2011 ...

Assembly redirect for Page Type Builder UI

Page Type Builder UI is a great plugin for synchronizing page types and page type classes. However, you may need to perform an assembly redirect to make PTB UI work with your specific PTB version.

26 Sep 2011 ...

More readable log4net logging in EPiServer

This post shows what we include in the EPiServerLog.config file to reduce clutter and improve readibility in the log files of EPiServer websites.

18 Sep 2011 ...

Single-assembly gadgets for EPiServer

This post presents a concept for creating single-assembly gadgets for EPiServer. This means a gadget can be added to a site by simply dropping a DLL in the bin folder and registering it in web.config.

14 Sep 2011 ...

Create a custom report in EPiServer Report Center

This post explains how to create a custom report for the EPiServer Report Center, an often forgotten but powerful tool for editors and administrators.

3 Sep 2011 ...

Create EPiServer Composer functions with Page Type Builder

In this post we look at how to create Composer functions, such as layout blocks and content blocks, with Page Type Builder.

2 Sep 2011 ...

Create an EPiServer Composer page type with Page Type Builder

Here we look at how to create a new Composer page type and template using EPiServer Composer 4 and Page Type Builder.

1 Sep 2011 ...

Easily inserting a screenshot in a TFS work item

This post explains how to add a custom control to your TFS installation to make it a lot easier to simply paste a screenshot directly into the work item editor.

23 Aug 2011 ...

Control which files are included when publishing an ASP.NET project

In this post we look at how to modify an ASP.NET project to include additional files not included in the project, and also how to exclude specific folders, when the project is published or deployed.

22 Aug 2011 ...

Deploy an ASP.NET site through Web Deploy using Publish in Visual Studio

This post goes through the steps necessary to enable remote deployment to a web server from within Visual Studio using the Publish command.

21 Aug 2011 ...

Debugger is not working in VS 2010

Having problems with debugging in Visual Studio 2010 even though you are running it as an administrator?

6 Jul 2011 ...

Shortcut and external links property in EPiServer

The reason for writing this is mostly to have it stored for myself, but I also had some problems with this property on a migration project that I have been...

30 Jun 2011 ...

Using config transforms with EPiServer

This post shows how to apply config transforms to elements with custom XML namespace attributes, such as the EPiServer element.

18 Jun 2011 ...

Edit mode redirects to login page in EPiServer CMS 6 R2

After an upgrade to EPiServer CMS 6 R2 we noticed that valid users were redirected to the login page whenever they tried accessing edit mode. Seems language-specific permissions were the culprit.

11 Jun 2011 ...

Making use of the Tuple class in .NET 4.0

The Tuple class, which was introduced in .NET 4.0, is handy for passing short-lived objects consisting of multiple related values.

26 May 2011 ...

The SEO tab in EPiServer ETF

The SEO tab in EPiServer is available for all page types when using ETF. This post explains the details of how the ETF SEO properties work.

12 May 2011 ...

Custom 404 and error pages in ASP.NET

Here's a brief summary of the HTTP error settings we use for custom 404 and other error pages for ASP.NET websites running on IIS 7+.

6 May 2011 ...

Using DebugView to see debug output in real-time

DebugView is a great way to see what your code is doing while an application is running, for example to see what the code for an ASP.NET web application does while browsing the site.

27 Apr 2011 ...

Creating a plain HTML page type for EPiServer

Despite risking mean comments about what a content management system is for - this post shows how we created a page type for publishing plain HTML content in EPiServer.

26 Apr 2011 ...

Code snippets for working with languages in EPiServer

These are a few handy code snippets for working with languages and language versions in EPiServer, for example to check if a page exists for a specific language.

25 Apr 2011 ...

Install ETF using EPiServer Deployment Center

This post shows how EPiServer Template Foundation can be added to an EPiServer CMS 6 website as a module using EPiServer Deployment Center.

24 Apr 2011 ...

Creating simple Dynamic Content in EPiServer CMS 6 R2

This post walks you through a simple example of how to create dynamic content in EPiServer CMS 6 R2 using the new DynamicContentPlugIn attribute.

24 Apr 2011 ...

Experiences from upgrading to EPiServer CMS 6 R2

This post summarizes some issues I ran into while upgrading an EPiServer CMS 6 R1 website to CMS 6 R2.

23 Apr 2011 ...

View .NET DLL source code using ILSpy

ILSpy is a free alternative to Reflector for disassembling .NET binaries. The project started as a reaction to Red Gate turning the previously free Reflector tool commercial.

19 Apr 2011 ...

Unable to implement abstract CriterionBase class in EPiServer

We ran into a rather peculiar problem when implementing custom visitor group criteria in EPiServer - we simply couldn't implement the abstract IsMatch member of the CriterionBase class.

18 Apr 2011 ...

Petition for an EPiServer source code browser

This is a petition to ask EPiServer to provide partners with a source code browser - perhaps most important for EPiServer CMS and Relate.

13 Apr 2011 ...

Create an RSS feed in EPiServer with ETF

This post demonstrates how to use ETF to create new RSS feeds for EPiServer websites.

11 Apr 2011 ...

Changes to how ETF UI controls are rendered in EPiServer

With ETF 1.1 came some breaking changes affecting ETF UI controls that mimic the appearance of EPiServer's page type property controls.

7 Apr 2011 ...

Integrating WordPress and EPiServer CMS

Screencast showing a WordPress plugin which allows a WP user to publish content from WordPress to EPiServer CMS.

3 Apr 2011 ...

Installing ASP.NET MVC 3 after Visual Studio 2010 SP1

I had some problems installing the Visual Studio tools for ASP.NET MVC 3 after having applied SP1 for VS2010, but this workaround sorted out the problems for me.

3 Apr 2011 ...

Installing EPiServer CMO 2.0

This post goes through some noteworthy issues when installing EPiServer CMO, including enabling thumbnails for LPO page variations and configuring the Live Monitor WCF service.

31 Mar 2011 ...

Enable news publishing on an EPiServer ETF website

Here we add basic news publishing functionality to a blank ETF-enabled EPiServer website.

31 Mar 2011 ...

Creating a blank EPiServer website based on ETF

This post goes through the steps required for setting up a new EPiServer website with ETF.

28 Mar 2011 ...

Problems with small border-radius and images using CSS3

I was playing around with the latest browser versions to see how they handled border-radius and I found a few things that differs in the implementations. Especially for small radii.

28 Mar 2011 ...

Upgrade an EPiServer CMS 4.61 to 6 is not without bumps

Upgrade and migration of an EPiServer CMS 4.61 to 6 is not without bumps and here I try to document the bumps. I encountered some strange errors that I thought I share. Otherwise the tools provided by EPiServer offers you a rather smooth ride!

27 Mar 2011 ...

Getmac: a great but hidden command

Ever had the problem with too many Tunnel adapters while searching for your MAC-address with the ipconfig command. Getmac is the command you are searching for!

4 Mar 2011 ...

Edit the Host File on Mac OSX 10.6 and point it to Windows 7 localhost in Parallels 6

Pointing out your local sites in the host file in Windows is easy but I found out it wasn’t that obvious on Mac. Especially when you need to point to localhost on your Windows machine running in Parallells. This is how I did it.

9 Feb 2011 ...

WordPress vs. EPiServer CMS

This comparison of EPiServer and WordPress is actually aimed at explaining why the two should not be compared - while at the same time providing some (hopefully) funny analogies.

28 Jan 2011 ...

Compiler error: Global.asax exists multiple times

I have experienced yet another really strange and annoying problem. This happened in an Umbraco-project that I’m working with. The error message you can see...

27 Jan 2011 ...

System.Web.HttpUtility class needs to get some appreciation!

I felt that I needed to give the HttpUtility some well deserved time in the spotlight. Also thought I spend some written space on the ParseQueryString() method, a really nice feature in the System.Web.HttpUtility class that helps you parse a querystring to a NameValueCollection.

25 Jan 2011 ...

TargetInvocationException while trying to load an EPiServer CMS 6 site

A strange and not that clear error that I experienced while trying to load an EPiServer CMS 6 site setup on my computer. After some digging I found that the problem in my case was...

17 Jan 2011 ...

How to customize TFS 2010 work items and workflows

There are a lot of project templates available for Team Foundation Server, but you often need to tweak them to suit your team. This post explains how to customize work item types and workflows.

14 Jan 2011 ...

Disable page-leave check for postbacks inside custom property controls in EPiServer

This post explains how to suppress the alert message displayed when a postback occurs inside a custom property control, for example when a button is clicked.

13 Jan 2011 ...

Install WordPress on Windows 7 and SQL Server

This step-by-step guide explains how to install WordPress on Windows and run it on Microsoft SQL Server instead of MySQL.

13 Dec 2010 ...

Design Patterns: a small blog series about design patterns for C#

This is a short series about some important and useful design patterns. Some you really should now about, for example the Singleton pattern.

7 Dec 2010 ...

Living with my iPad: not starting up!

I really want to write all good things about the IPad, but first a small and minor and very much solvable issue, with my new IPad. This small pad has really...

3 Dec 2010 ...

Experiences with MacBook Pro 13’’ an Intel X-25M 160GB SSD HDD and Win7

I had problems installing Win7 on a MacBook Pro 13'' Intel X25-M Unibody, but stumbled upon an alternate route to take on my path to find a solution. I found Parallells 6!

18 Nov 2010 ...

Set up dotLess in a new ASP.NET project

This post walks you through how to set up the dotLess CSS framework with an ASP.NET project in order to enable inheritance, arithmetic and variables in stylesheets.

11 Nov 2010 ...

Default document breaks in edit mode in EPiServer CMS 5

This post explains how to get around a problem in EPiServer 5 which causes the edit mode link to throw a 404, page not found.

21 Oct 2010 ...

HTML5 and its impact on Flash and Silverlight

A lot of people are speculating how HTML5 will affect proprietary plugins such as Flash and Silverlight on the web. Here are my two cents on the subject.

19 Oct 2010 ...

Create EPiServer dynamic content with advanced settings

This post explains how to use a user control for presenting a user interface to an editor when inserting dynamic content.

19 Oct 2010 ...

Convert to and from Base64-encoding in .NET

Code snippet demonstrating how to convert a string value to and from Base64 encoding in .NET.

6 Oct 2010 ...

What is KML, what do you use it to and some great references.

KML is a great way of providing your maps-solution with large amounts of POI’s. KML is based on XML and closely related to GML (Geography Markup Language). A great way of providing the public Google Maps or your own implementation with POIs.

30 Sep 2010 ...

EPiServer Template Foundation Beta released

EPiServer Template Foundation is a framework for speeding up the development of EPiServer websites by offering common page type definitions, site features, and developer helpers for reducing repetitive tasks and for simplifying certain complex concepts.

28 Sep 2010 ...

Create new dynamic content in EPiServer

One way to create more dynamic page templates in EPiServer is to use dynamic content. Here's an example of how to create dynamic content including dynamic content settings.

24 Sep 2010 ...

Maintenance plans in MS SQL 2008

Maintenance plans in MS SQL 2008 is a really neat feature in MS SQL that is very easily missed. I also found a typical, but not so clear error while starting to use these features.

15 Sep 2010 ...

Manually setting the namespace for a web service proxy class in Visual Studio

When a web service proxy class is generated by Visual Studio it comes with a default namespace. This post shows a way of modifying how the proxy class is generated to manually specify which namespace to use.

6 Sep 2010 ...

Add a stylesheet link programmatically in ASP.NET

Code snippet for programmatically adding a CSS link in ASP.NET.

26 Aug 2010 ...

IIS.Net a great resource

IIS.net a great resource of information that easily passes you by. Small tips of how to use the web server to optimize your site, on startup take it for a warm-up and much more.

26 Aug 2010 ...

System.Web.AspNetHostingPermission when using third-party assembly

When downloading third-party-product to include in your project, you can easily get this error: System.Web.AspNetHostingPermission.

9 Aug 2010 ...

Unit test an EPiServer 6 website using Visual Studio 2010 and MSTest

When unit testing it can be tricky being dependent on a web context. In this post we'll look at how to start EPiServer and run it outside of a web application to make unit testing easier.

9 Aug 2010 ...

Run EPiServer CMS 6 on ASP.NET 4.0

Getting EPiServer CMS 6 up and running on ASP.NET 4.0 is easy, although it should be noted that EPiServer doesn't officially support ASP.NET 4.0 yet.

6 Aug 2010 ...

Use UpdatePanel inside an EPiServer custom property

In order to use ASP.NET AJAX inside an EPiServer custom property you have to have a ScriptManager present. Here's an example of how to add one programmatically.

4 Aug 2010 ...

Map EPiServer properties to custom property controls

The PropertyControlClassFactory class makes it easy to map EPiServer properties to custom property controls to modify how properties are rendered.

30 Jul 2010 ...

Loading and saving a custom property value with PropertyUserControlBase

The PropertyUserControlBase class in Template Foundation has been updated with two new events called PropertyLoad and PropertySave, making it easier to load and save the property value.

25 Jul 2010 ...

Custom properties in EPiServer using user controls

EPiServer Template Foundation makes it a lot easier to create custom properties based on user controls. In this post we go through the steps needed to create a new custom property in EPiServer and use user controls for rendering the property in edit mode and on page templates.

25 Jul 2010 ...

Introduction to EPiServer properties

This post tries to clarify what an EPiServer property is and how it works, primarily to enable us to better develop custom properties for EPiServer websites.

17 Jul 2010 ...

Using config transforms for EPiServer settings

The build-specific configuration transforms that came with Visual Studio 2010, more specifically MSBuild 4, offer a pretty clean way of managing build-specific configurations. Here's a way of doing it, including a way of managing EPiServer-specific settings.

16 Jul 2010 ...

New EPiServer website using Template Foundation

In this post we'll look at how to set up an EPiServer CMS 6 website from scratch based on EPiServer Template Foundation.

9 Jul 2010 ...

Book review: Clean Code by Robert C. Martin

To write code that will last for a long time, over iterations and between programmers, focus must lie on writing Clean Code. After stating that, what does Clean Code actually mean and which rules should a programmer follow.

2 Jul 2010 ...

Built-in SMTP-server in the IIS returns 5.7.1 Unable to relay

Built-in SMTP-server in the IIS returns "550 5.7.1 Unable to relay" after I had upgraded the server to Windows Server 2008 SP2...

21 Jun 2010 ...

Introduction to EPiServer Template Foundation

In this post we’ll look at how to include EPiServer Template Foundation in your EPiServer project in order to use the different page type base classes and publish EPiServer pages using Windows Live Writer through the MetaWeblog API.

2 Jun 2010 ...

ClassFactory not initialized exception in InitializableModule

The new initialization system in EPiServer 6 can be used to execute logic in a specific order on startup. This post explains how to ensure your startup modules are executed after the DataFactory has been initialized properly.

2 Jun 2010 ...

Security exceptions when using Page Type Builder

When adding Page Type Builder to an EPiServer project you may run into security exceptions because the assemblies aren't fully trusted. Luckily, fixing it is quick and painless!

26 May 2010 ...

Cache objects in EPiServer with page dependencies

EPiServer comes with its own set of cache management classes to help you cache objects which depend on specific EPiServer pages, and also ensure cache updates are propagated among multiple web servers.

25 May 2010 ...

Open-source framework for EPiServer 6 will be presented at Partner Summit

At EPiServer Partner Summit we'll present an upcoming open-source framework for EPiServer 6 which aims to reduce repetitive tasks and extend EPiServer core functionality by adding MetaWeblog support, tags, date folder sorting and a whole lot more.

23 May 2010 ...

How to configure your Windows logon background in Windows 7

Windows 7 has really taken steps further to enable the user to personalize the experience. One thing that can be changed if you look a little bit closer and is a little bit geeky is the logon screen wallpaper.

21 May 2010 ...

Attach EPiServer event handlers on startup using InitializableModule

Explanation of the new InitializableModule concept in EPiServer 6 which is used to implement functionality that should execute when an EPiServer site starts, for example to attach event handlers.

21 May 2010 ...

Create a new page language branch programmatically in EPiServer

This article describes how to create a new language branch programmatically for an existing page in EPiServer.

21 May 2010 ...

Create a page programmatically in EPiServer

Code sample demonstrating how to create new EPiServer pages programmatically using the DataFactory class.

20 May 2010 ...

Search pages in EPiServer using FindPagesWithCriteria

How to find pages in EPiServer by searching using the FindPagesWithCriteria method. The code sample describes how to search in EPiServer using criterias based on page properties.

8 Dec 2009 ...

Introduction to the PageTypeBuilder project

An introduction to Joel Abrahamsson's PageTypeBuilder project for EPiServer. Here I go through the basics of defining a strongly typed page type including page type inheritance.

8 Dec 2009 ...

How to set up an EPiServer website

This post mainly aims to complement Frederik Vig’s posts on setting up a new EPiServer site with some comments and pointer that I find valuable.

12 Oct 2009 ...

Introduction to EPiServer Dynamic Data Store (DDS)

This post provides an introduction to the Dynamic Data Store, or DDS, which was introduced with EPiServer 6.

16 Sep 2009 ...

Parse an EPiServer XHTML property with Dynamic Content

This post explains how to parse XHTML which contains dynamic content in EPiServer so that we can retrieve the actual markup.

14 Apr 2009 ...

Managing e-mail subscriptions in EPiServer

In this post we create an admin plugin for EPiServer which allows administrators to add or remove e-mail subscribers.

8 Sep 2008 ...

Localize page type and page property names in EPiServer

This post shows how to translate page type and property names and descriptions to have them appear in the correct language in the editor interface when globalization is enabled for an EPiServer web site.

26 Aug 2008 ...

Using web parts in EPiServer

This article explains how to use web parts for EPiServer templates using the Web Part Framework for EPiServer which is available on EPiCode.

18 Aug 2008 ...

Run a scheduled job as a specific EPiServer user

This post shows how to login to an EPiServer site programmatically, for example to execute a scheduled job as a specific user.

15 Aug 2008 ...

How to get the simple address of a page in EPiServer

This post explains how to get the simple address of a page, if any. As it turns out, it's just a matter of getting the PageExternalURL property.

8 Aug 2008 ...

Create a scheduled job in EPiServer

This post explains how to create a scheduled job in EPiServer CMS.

24 Jul 2008 ...

Create a custom URL rewrite provider for EPiServer

Post explaining how to implement a custom URL rewrite provider in EPiServer by inheriting the FriendlyUrlRewriteProvider class and customizing its behavior.

7 Feb 2008 ...

How to get the friendly URL of a page in EPiServer CMS

This post explains how to get the friendly URL of a page in EPiServer, handy for those cases where you won't get automatic rewriting of internal URLs.