Bluegenegeek

Apr 04

Sitefinity Ecommerce Donations widget available on Github

Code is also available on Github here .You can read more about the widget from Steve Miller’s post on sitefinity.com here

Jan 01

Happy New Year 2012

Dec 20

Sitefinity 4.4 released!

Nov 10

Using Disqus comments in Sitefinity

In my previous post I explained how to use Disqus in a development environment.

In this post I will talk about how to use Disqus comments in Sitefinity Blogs.

Getting started with Disqus is pretty simple, go to Disqus.com and signup, all you need is to provide Site information (site where you will use Disqus comments) and your moderator information. 

Now navigate to Disqus developers section where you will find an universal code that you can embed. Copy that code and paste it into a user control in your Sitefinity Web Application. 

Below is how how your user control will look like - 

You would need to change “disqus_shortname” to your disqus short name. This is how your control setup will look like - 

Now navigate to Sitefinity’s backend and go to Design-> Widget Templates and look for “Full Blog Post Item” template and edit the template. 

At the top of the Widget Template add the below lines to register your Disqus Comments control. 

Now scroll to the end of the template where you will find a section where Sitefinity’s default Comments controls can be found. Below image will show you where they are -

replace these controls with the disqus comments control that has been registered above, below is how it would look like -  

Nov 06

Developing with Disqus on localhost

Disqus is a popular comment platform which can be integrated to any website by using simple Javascript snippet code.

This article talks about how to develop with Disqus, on localhost or on your development environment.

 When you are running Disqus for the first time, disqus tries to verify your URL, if your URL fails to match certain criteria you will be presented with “We were unable to load Disqus” message. Unfortunately this message will also be shown when you are running your website locally.

To overcome this error message and still have Disqus working correctly when developing(in localhost scenarios) you will have to set disqus_developer variable before your regular Disqus JavaScript snippet. Below is how you would do it -

var disqus_developer = 1;

Nov 03

Sitefinity 4.3 released

Oct 10

Changing product detail URL in Sitefinity Ecommerce

By default, Sitefinity Ecommerce ships with a date formatted URL for the Product Detail page, which comes very handy if you just want to let your users know when the product was published. But as with any other part of Sitefinity, this URL can be highly customized to meet your own needs and make even more Pretty URL or PURL in general.

You can change the default route of products in 2 ways

1. 1. Using the urlFormat in the backend of Sitefinity
2. 2. Extending OpenAccessCatalogDataProvider in your application

Using urlFormat in the backend of Sitefinity –

This option will let you extend the detail to not to have the date in the URL. To attain this URL format you would need to navigate to Backend-> Administration-> Settings-> Advanced-> Catalog->Providers-> OpenAccessProvider-> Parameters and then create a new parameter with the name urlFormat and value /[UrlName], this will change product detail URL to not have date. Please also note that new products added to the system will get new URL format by default but already existing products doesn’t change the URL by default. You will have to republish the existing products toget the new URL format. Below is a screenshot on how the new URL would look like -

Extending OpenAccessCatalogDataProvider -

This option will let you extend the route of product detail in any way you want. You have complete control over the route that leads to the detail page. Here is how you would do it –

1.  You will need to change the ProviderType to a custom class in your own application.
2.  Add the code to extend the route. (see example below)

Oct 06

Thank you, Steve

Sep 28

Sitefinity 4.2 SP1 released

Sep 25

Disable AutoComplete on Textbox in ASP.NET

There are cases when you want to turn off AutoComplete that all modern browsers offer for textbox.

<asp:TextBox ID="tbAutoCompleteIE" runat="server" AutoCompleteType="Disabled"></asp:TextBox>

<asp:TextBox ID="tbAutoCompleteAll" runat="server" autocomplete="Off"></asp:TextBox>