Blog posts by Adam Najmanowicz

Copying files between path providers with PowerShell in EPiServer

2011-08-18T18:07:04.0000000Z

We had a situation in the company this week which required us to deliver the whole EPiServer virtual path provider file structure to the client – zipped. Easy enough… go to the EpiServer VPP directory and… well… ok… hmm… so the path provider is versioning and as a consequence the physical organization of files on […]

PowerShell for EPiServer – cheat sheet – Part 2

2011-05-10T11:08:00.0000000Z

Most of this post is also based on the Microsoft’s Windows PowerShell Quick Reference however despite the sharing scripting runtimes the nature of the both shells differ considerably as described in the previous post: PowerShell for EPiServer – cheat sheet – Part 1. In all cases where it made sense I’ve converted the samples […]

PowerShell for EPiServer – cheat sheet – Part 1

2011-05-09T10:00:00.0000000Z

Most of this is based on the Microsoft’s Windows PowerShell Quick Reference however despite the sharing scripting runtimes the nature of the both shells are pretty different (although the differences are not as vast as one might think). Windows PowerShell PowerShell Console for EPiServer Interactive – command can ask for confirmations and can be […]

EPiServer Admin Mode PowerShell scripts

2011-05-07T23:23:00.0000000Z

The PowerShell plugin gets an update once again to support Admin mode script collections in addition to the context scripts. How to write an Admin mode script collections? <ContextScriptCollection> <Title>Statistics Scripts</Title> <Description>This script collection ... </Description> <Area>Administration</Area> <Scripts> <ContextScript> <Title>Restart Application</Title> <Description>The script restarts this instance of EPiServer...</Warning> <Script>Restart-Application</Script> <Icon>/App_Themes/Default/Images/Tools/Refresh.gif</Icon> <Groups> </Groups> </ContextScript> </Scripts> </ContextScriptCollection> […]

Context PowerShell Scripts in EPiServer

2011-05-04T08:00:00.0000000Z

Ok, so I’ve got my shot of endorphins writing about PowerShell last week (damn, it’s nice to be able to code again!), and I got pretty determined on making it usable and achieving all the goals I’ve initially envisioned. and in the process build a usable tool and a library of scripts that people can […]

PowerShell console – now compatible with EPiServer CMS 6 R2

2011-04-29T14:00:00.0000000Z

It’s been a while since I had a chance to do any coding… turns out leading a development division tends to not have much to do with development… who knew?! But I’ve finally got a moment to sit down and refresh the EPiServer PowerShell console and make it compatible with both CMS versions 5 & […]

A story of a saved EPiServer site

2010-11-05T14:21:00.0000000Z

I meant to write this a long time ago but somehow that never really got out of the room. Following is a narrative of an EPiServer site that was on and off the net for half a year or longer and what I’ve learned in the process. <day id=”1” /> We’ve gathered all the data […]

The Console of Mass Content Management

2010-09-22T01:02:06.0000000Z

This one definitely took more time than I initially expected, and before I devote even more to it I would very much like to hear your opinion. Do you find it useful? Which way should the development be going? But first things first… Have you ever found yourself: having to make a mundane change to […]

CMS UX – give the content some thought!

2010-02-08T13:01:38.0000000Z

One of the many things we debate constantly at Cognifide is how to improve the user experience. How to make editor’s life easier, how to simplify the common everyday tasks, what can be automated, and simply how to make our customer smile a little when they use our projects. For that to work, apart from […]

Easy Enum property for EPiServer

2009-12-26T20:29:55.0000000Z

One of the most frequently and eagerly used programming constructs of the Microsoft.Net Framework is Enum. There are several interesting features that make it very compelling to use to for all kinds of dropdowns and checklists: The bounds factor – proper use of Enum type guarantee that the selected value will fall within the constraints […]

Database-based paged EPiServer searches for CMS 5 R2 SP2

2009-07-07T13:15:25.0000000Z

Aparently I have written something on that note before for CMS 4 and it looks like someone still needs it as I got a request for an updated version for it a couple of days ago. So here we go: for the most part the syntax for the call is equivalent to what is was […]

SoakIE – a Web Server Stress Tool with a twist

2009-05-10T16:27:06.0000000Z

Last week or so ago a couple of friends in another project in Cognifide has run into a wall while trying to load test their website. the problem was as follows: The website is highly AJAX based – the page merely loads a stub in the initial request but then loads the rest of its […]

Advanced Language Manipulation Tool for EPiServer

2009-04-06T17:49:11.0000000Z

Have you ever (or have your customers) created and edited a page in one language only to realize that their selected locale was wrong? Have you ever wished you could delete a master language branch of a page after creating its localized counterpart but you could only delete the newly created slave language instead? Have […]

Get out of my way! … or the story of file metadata for VirtualPathProvider in EPiServer

2009-03-17T01:18:00.0000000Z

Immediately after you implement the VirtualPathProvider proxy from my previous post you will notice a one fairly serious lack in it. Namely all the files within that provider will be hiding behind the registration form. That is not cool for a couple of reasons… You may want to keep all of the files in one […]

Simple registration for files served by EPiServer

2009-03-12T22:01:00.0000000Z

With the culture of knowledge sharing and open source spreading, everyone races to show they have something valuable that you may want. And while you may not ask for money for your content you may still want to get something in return, say a contact, an email address that’s verified (or not), to keep in […]

WebParts based Sidebar for EPiServer – how to use it?

2009-01-08T18:06:47.0000000Z

Once you’ll update the framework to the extended one, you will immediately notice that… nothing has changed. Hmm… did something go wrong? Well, not really. By default the framework will be run in the “legacy mode”. Thanks to an old article by our own Marek Blotny, I’ve learned how to build Plugin settings which are […]

WebParts based Sidebar for EPiServer – the motivation and specification

2009-01-08T15:04:12.0000000Z

Back in the day when we started designing our last project we’ve been presented with a following problem – a big number of templates with slightly different sidebars. Hmm… Is sidebar a part of content? No, rather not. We don’t want the editors to have to setup the sidebar for every article they write (and […]

Fix for EPiServer CMS5 interfering with your EPiServer 4

2008-06-27T16:47:11.0000000Z

The problem that can make a grown up man cry… You’re editing your EPiServer 4 project and suddenly the edit mode stops working. the server reports compilation errors. something along the lines: Compiler error: CS0433: Type „EPiServer.Global” exists in „c:\WINDOWS\assembly\GAC_MSIL\EPiServer\5.1.422.122__8fe83dea738b45b7\EPiServer.dll” and „c:\WINDOWS\assembly\GAC\EPiServer\4.61.5.83__8fe83dea738b45b7\EPiServer.dll” The solution is to go to your web.config and edit the compilation section. […]

Text-Image generation – VirtualPathProvider for EPiServer (and ASP.NET in general) – Part 2 (configuration)

2008-06-24T20:36:00.0000000Z

The configuration of the module is a descendant of any EPiServer Virtual Path Provider configuration. This aspect is fairly well described on EPiServer pages. A sample configuration for the TextImageVirtualPathProvider can look as follows <configuration> <episerver> <virtualPath <providers> <add showInFileManager="false" virtualName="Text Images" virtualPath="~/TextImages/" bypassAccessCheck="false" name="TextImages" type="Cognifide.ImageVirtualPathProvider.TextImageVirtualPathProvider,Cognifide.ImageVirtualPathProvider" physicalPath="C:\temp\TextImages" allowedReferers="(localhost)" allowNullReferrer="false" replacementStrings="$colon$,:,$gt$,>,$dot$,.,$quot$,",$amp$,&,$star$,*,$eol$,
,"/> </providers> </virtualPath> </episerver> </configuration> […]

Text-Image generation – VirtualPathProvider for EPiServer (and ASP.NET in general) – Part 1

2008-06-23T20:00:00.0000000Z

The module code is already available on Epicode SVN, the relevant wiki pages will be following as soon as documentation is complete. The use case is as follows: The client wants the site to look exactly as in a template provided as a image, the text is using a non standard font that is not […]