Sitecore Output Caching: Kick it up a Notch

Ever wondered how Sitecore caches works? It is pretty cool, actually. Sitecore can cache the output of any presentation component that it is aware of (Sublayout, WebControl, XSL Rendering). Basically, this output may vary on data context (Context Item or Datasource), device, whether user is logged in or not, parameters passed to the rendering, query string and Context user:
This gives a ton of options and in most cases this is sufficient, but what if the output of your rendering depends on inner logic embedded within the control? Sometimes you could solve this with VaryByParm and by passing different parameters to the rendering, but what if that’s not the case?
This is exactly the use case I have been presented during another onsite visit with a customer.
Here is a very simple way of extending the cache variation logic for a Sublayout.

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Web Forms File Upload: 2 Exceptions [Common Errors]

If you are having trouble with the File Upload field within the Web Forms for Marketers module, specifically the form submission fails with a generic error, check your Sitecore log file. If you see either of the following two exceptions, there is a solution! Read on.

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Sitecore Developer Network Search just got a bit better

We just pushed an update to the SDN search, which included greatly enhanced search within Sitecore Community Blogs, and integrated SDN Forum. Now you should be able to search against any Sitecore resource from one place!

Among other enhancements, we’ve improved search relevancy by tweaking a few settings and ignoring landing pages.

Hope you see the difference.

Feel free to provide feedback, especially if your own blog is not getting indexed by us.

Enjoy!

Windows Authentication for Sitecore. Repost

Back in 08 I posted this walkthrough on how to configure Sitecore to use Windows Authentication for SQL connection and effectively remove the username and password from the connectionStrings.config file.
Here is a quick repost of the walkthrough with a few tweaks for SQL 2008 / Windows 2008 (R2) and Sitecore 6.4.x/6.5 (some steps are not required any more):

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Old Search is deprecated in Sitecore 6.5

I’ve blogged about this before, now it’s official. If you have not seen this before, you can find the following in the Release Notes for 6.5:
The Sitecore.Data.Indexing namespace has been deprecated and will be removed in a future version of the CMS in favor of the more powerful and flexible Sitecore.Search classes and corresponding index definitions.

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