Sitecore Marketplace Module - Lang Item State Change Workflow Action

I have converted one of my earlier blog posts into Sitecore Marketplace module.

Marketplace Module Link :
https://marketplace.sitecore.net/en/Modules/L/Lang_Item_State_Change_Workflow_Action.aspx

This is a simple workflow action which can be used to take only defined language item to a defined workflow state.

Just installed this and Workflow action will be available in Templates/User Defined section
/sitecore/templates/User Defined/WorkflowAction/Lang Item State Change Action

This action can be added inside Workflow states to execute.

Hope this will be useful for someone!!

Importance of Case-sensitivity of hostName attribute of Sites config node

Today, we faced a strange issue, which questioned my knowledge of Site Definition configurations in Sitecore :-D

One of my colleague had a Sitecore instance with site definition had hostnames defined.

Ex:

<site name="website" hostname="abc.xxx.local" virtualFolder="/" physicalFolder="/" rootPath="/sitecore/content" startItem="/home" database="web" domain="extranet" ... />


But, he had his IIS site defined with "xxx.local".

Even though hostname attribute is "abc.xxx.local", request to "xxx.local" works fine and match to the "website" site definition.

This made me confused as my knowledge said only request that should map to "website" site defition is request with same value as hostname attribute value.

I had a quick google search and found my thinking was correct.
https://sdn.sitecore.net/SDN5/Articles/Administration/Configuring%20Multiple%20Sites/Configuring%20Sites%20in%20web,-d-,config%20File.aspx

So, when Sitecore it self saying this, how is this not working accordingly is my next question.

Then, I found Jon West's following blog post about hostName setting, which explained the real issue with our setting.
https://www.sitecore.net/learn/blogs/technical-blogs/john-west-sitecore-blog/posts/2013/08/mapping-hostnames-to-sites-with-the-sitecore-aspnet-cms.aspx

Quote :
As a word of caution, in several cases I have seen where device resolution did not work as a developer expected, the issue was that their configuration used hostname (with a lowercase n in the attribute name) rather than hostName (with an uppercase N). Be sure to capitalize the N.

 After changing "hostname" to "hostName", everything started to work accordingly. :-)

Languages.AutoRemoveItemData Setting - Sitecore Setting of the Day

While I'm looking through the web.config settings, I saw an interesting setting which took my mind to past.

Few months back, one of my previous workplace colleague told me that a trouble he went through while trying to delete an language in Sitecore. After he had deleted a language in Sitecore and looking into the items in content editor, item versions related to that language has also been deleted from Sitecore. They had to work hard to make everything Okay in the system.

The setting which remind me the above scenario is,

<!-- LANGUAGES AUTO REMOVE ITEM DATA
       Indicates if item data is automatically removed from a database when a language is deleted.
       Default value: true
-->
<setting name="Languages.AutoRemoveItemData" value="true" />


So, if you have set the above property to false, and then deleted the language, items will remain with Sitecore.

But, off-course, there should be steps taken to make this removal sensible, since there is no point of having items of Non-existing language :-D

Weekly Blogging Challenge of our Team - Week 1

To grow our self together, our team has started a weekly blogging challenge.

So, following are the our come of first week. (I know these blog posts are not in expert level. But, I am sure our team will grow and provide more advance blogs in the future)


All about Sitecore Instance Manager (SIM 1.3) by Udara Rajarathna

How to access Sitecore Items and Languages using API by Prageeth Roshane (Sitecore Labs Blog)

How to setup WFFM module by Pasan Samarakoon (PS Solutions Blog)

Contact not adding to Contact List in Sitecore 8 update-2 and Ways to access Template builder by Chaturanga Ranatunga (Sitecore Footsteps Blog)

see you in our new Blogging challenge. :-)