Sitecore 9 training notes that are still valid for 10 but not for XM Cloud

Content, Templates & Renderings

Template Convention

Templates starting with an underscore are considered what kind of template:

  • “Parent” / Base templates

Sitecore allows for what kind of template inheritance

  • “Multiple”

What kind of template inheritance is bad?

  • Circular

Avoid what kind of field names?

  • “Duplicate”

How can you have duplicate field names? 

  • If they’re in different sections.  But use the “Title” field to hold the duplicate names and give the field actually different names.

Why would you limit available commands in the rich text editor?

  • Make it easier for content authors.
  • Prevent them from making content that doesn’t fit the site

Tokens

What does the $name token do?

  • Gets the name of the item

What does the $date token do?

  • Gets the current date (only date)

What does the $now token do?

  • Gets the current date & time

Content Structure Recommendations

What is the limit on child items?

  • “100”

What is the limit on item versions?

  • “10”

Sitecore image field rendering

When looking at the following code, what does mw and mh mean?

@Html.Sitecore().Field(“myImageField”, new {mw=120, mh=120})

  • Max width
  • Max height

What does the code above accomplish?

  • Caches the result on the server
  • Serves less data
  • Overrides author settings

Configuration

What does Sitecore call config groups?

  • “Layers”

What do the layers.config file do?

  • Defines the processing order

What’s the default order?

  • (base)
  • Sitecore layer
  • Modules
  • Custom
  • Environmental

What are the two syntaxes for changing values?

  • Patch
  • Set

Can Sitecore Rocks show the whole config?

  • True

What does Vertical Scaling do?

  • Use CM & CD environments, both do different things.

Where are server roles defined?

  • By an AppSetting in the web.config

What are the ways to go about extending Sitecore?

  • Package
  • Module
  • Update Package

What can Packages contain?

  • Code
  • Configuration
  • Serialized sitecore items, roles, and users

Users are installed disabled and passwords are reset, true or false?

  • True

Where are the modules found?

  • Modules are packages found on the Sitecore Marketplace

How are update packages defined?

  • Update packages have an .update extension
  • Installed via updateinstallationwizard.aspx page

What can Sitecore Rocks do to help undo a package installation?

  • Sitecore Rocks can make an anti-package
  • Has to be made before installing a package

Multisite Environment

Where are site nodes for a multisite environment stored?

  • Sitecore.config
  • Should use a separate patch file

Does order matter for Sitecore nodes?

  • Yes

Are sites added before or after the website node?

  • Before

What is included in the configuration?

  • Port
  • Hostname
  • Path url

In Sitecore 9, is it required to inherit from the standard rendering parameter template?

  • No
  • But you won’t get standard fields if you do
  • Previously was required for all Sitecore versions

Are compatible renderings a two-way setting?

  • No

Where are rendering parameters stored?

  • _rendering field

What is used to generate all links?

  • LinkManager

Why do we generate all links the same way?

  • So that all items are only indexed once

LinkManager

Var options = LinkManager.GetDefaultUrlOptions();

LinkManager.GetItemUrl(item, options);

  • Recommend single url for each page, not multiple URLs.
  • Can use canonical if different URLs are required for the same page

How does one produce translated urls?

  • By using the item’s display name property in the link manager

What do wildcard items do?

  • Allow you to use dynamic URLs
  • Match to any request

What is a wildcard item?

  • An item that is just an asterisk

How are navigation items typically made?

  • By inspecting the content tree
  • E.g. menus, dropdowns, parents and getchildren()

What is the recommended way of getting the sub-items in a branch?

  • ContentSearch recommended over GetDescendants.

Why does a foreach on a getchildren need Item vs var?

  • Var resolves as an object rather than an item

What is recommended as a way of preventing an item showing up in navigation?

  • “Exclude from navigation” field

What does it mean when Language Embedding is set to “As Needed”?

  • It means that the first request to a site will have the language embedded but after clicking the first link, the language will not show again until it is changed

Experience Editor

What foundation is the experience platform built on?

  • Exp management
  • xConnect
  • Exp database

What makes up Sitecore XP?

  • Exp Management
  • Marketing from xConnect
  • Exp Database

What is the name of the main screen of Sitecore?

  • The Launchpad

What does the view tab in the Experience Editor do?

  • Turns field highlighting on and off with “controls” checkbox

When are data and presentation?

  • Everywhere except for the rich text field

As of Sitecore 8.2 what service is now standalone?

  • Publishing

What two services makeup xConnect?

  • Collection
  • Search

Official Sitecore Documentation

What is the url for the Sitecore developer portal?

  • Dev.sitecore.net

What is the url for the Sitecore Documentation Site?

  • Doc.sitecore.net

What is the url for the Sitecore Developer Network?

  • Sdn.sitecore.net

What is the url for the Sitecore Knowledge Base?

  • Kb.sitecore.net

What is Sitecore’s Youtube Channel called?

  • Master Sitecore

Where do you find helix information for Sitecore?

  • Helix.sitecore.net

Where is Sitecore’s curated blog?

  • sitecore.net/learn/blogs/technical-blogs.aspx

What is the two main dll’s for Sitecore?

  • Sitecore.Kernal
  • Sitecore.MVC

What’s the best way to get the sitecore dlls?

  • Nuget feed

It’s recommending referencing dlls from where?

  • Separate folder

Can Sitecore Rocks synch folders?

  • True

In Sitecore Rocks, what does Mode Mirror do?

  • Syncs everything

In Sitecore ROcks, what does Mode Copy do?

  • Doesn’t sync deletions

What do you use to get current item?

  • Sitecore.Context.Item, OR
  • RenderingContext  ← this one

Where do you put items that need to be access by a URL?

  • Under the home item of the site

Creating Edit Frames

Where do you add buttons to Experience editor?

  • Core database

What does the edit frame do?

  • Makes part of the page clickable

Where do the edit frames live?

  • In Core
  • Under WebEdit / Edit Frame Buttons

What character is used to deliminate the field names?

  • Pipe

Search and Search Driven Components

What bulk operations can you do from Search in Sitecore?

  • Apply presentation
  • Add tag
  • Publish
  • Serialize

What kind of model does Search use?

  • Provider model

Name two search engines built into Sitecore?

  • Solr
  • Azure

What is the advantage of Azure Search?

  • High reliability – not really, but that’s the answer

Does sitecore index Data or Html?

  • Data

Do all search results have urls or presentation details?

  • No

Default index configuration indexes what?

  • All items and most fields
  • Except those based on a bucket related template

What is Sitecore’s basic unit?

  • Item

What does Sitecore index?

  • Document

Store vs Index

If StorageType = “yes” is set then what?

  • The entire content is stored in the index and can be retrieved from there.
  • The index is bigger
  • Index just keeps tokenized items

Name three different types of content in Sitecore can store in the same index?

  • Sharepoint
  • ERP
  • Sitecore items

Buckets

What is the max number of children?

  • 100

WIll urls change when items are converted into a bucket?

  • Yes

Who should make buckets?

  • Developers, not authors

What means when a standard value item is a bucket?

  • Items created from that template are also buckets

When do you use Synch – under Buckets?

  • When the configuration for the bucket or bucketed items has changed

If an item is hidden, in a bucket does it need to be bucketable to be hidden?

  • Yes

How do you retain parent-child relationships?

  • Click the lock child relationship” checkbox in the standard field

How best do you get bucket items?

  • Use ContentSearch api

When does a Linq query run?

  • When something like GetResults or ToList is invoked
  • Considered lazy loading

How do you do descendent-type searches?

  • Use the property “Paths” along with “Contains”

What does GetResult give?

  • Total number of search results hits property and facets

Custom QUery result types can be used in place of what?

  • SearchREsultItem

Predicate builder lets you do what?

  • Make complex searches at runtime (e.g. loops)

Facets have what?

  • Extension methods
  • Have conults (??? I don’t even remember what this was) of result values

Why should we use icons?

Why use buckets?

Why some items are not hidden inside a bucket?

How do you get items from a bucket that has thousands of items?

Which dll do you need to do a content search to build a menu?

Which dll do you need to get the model.rederingitem?

Where do we save the default values of an item?

Where should we save shared/common content in multi-site implementation?

Where are Sitecore indexes stored?

/data/indexes folder (I think)

What xml node is used in layers.config to set order?

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