Sitecore Basics
1. What are
the major changes in Sitecore versions 7.0, 7.1, 7.2, 7.5, 8.0 and 8.1?
Sitecore
7.0
|
Sitecore
7.1
|
Introduced
item bucket concept to support storage of large numbers of content items
|
SPEAK
UI framework is introduced to accelerate custom application development
|
Sitecore tagging /facets for improved search experiences
|
The
Sitecore Item Web API (previously available as a separate download) is now
distributed as part of the CMS
|
A
new Sitecore.ContentSearch namespace that contains new indexing and search
APIs
|
Support
for MVC 4, along with other fixes and improvements.
|
Change
in the search provider architecture allowing different search engines to be
swapped in to support both published site and internal CMS search
|
Sitecore
7.2
|
Sitecore
7.5
|
Performance
improvements in publishing
|
Introduction
of xDB (Sitecore Experience Database)
|
Sitecore
MVC supports ASP.NET MVC 5.1
|
Introduction of xProfile
|
Multivariate
testing configured per language
|
Sitecore
8.0
|
Sitecore
8.1
|
Redesigned
cross-platform SPEAK-based Sitecore client interfaces
Redesigned
Launchpad offering access to all platform applications
Introduced
Federated Experience Manager (FXM)
Enhanced
Experience Analytics
Versioned
layouts – a different presentation set on different versions of different
languages for the same item
Content
testing and optimization reporting
|
Sitecore
8.1 provides full integration with Sitecore Commerce 8.1, ensuring the
users’ purchase transaction is seamlessly integrated with the overall digital
Experience.
Sitecore
Detection Services—IP lookup and device detection services built into the
platform—as well as rules editors. Now you can customize your users’
experiences based on their location and optimize their load times and display
based on the actual device they’re using
Sitecore
has packaged the product into two version(flavor’s),one for those who
interested in market-leading web content management system (Sitecore
Experience Management 8.1 -CMS only mode) and another those who want to use
Sitecore to manage the entire customer experience (Sitecore Experience
Platform 8.1)
|
Below link details about the sitecore versions & why upgrade to Sitecore XP 8.1
https://www.eduserv.org.uk/~/media/Files/News%20and%20Events/PDF%20files/WhyupgradeSXP81WPLTR.PDF
2.
For performance, you should use the TreelistEx field type in your
data templates instead of the Treelist field type.
With a Treelist, the client renders the selection tree and the
list of selected items whenever the user selects an item that contains the
field.
With a TreelistEx, the client renders only the list of selected
items, and does not render the selection tree until the user clicks the Edit
command above the field. This is especially important for Treelists that invoke
queries that can consume processing time on the server.
3. What is shared layout and final layout in Sitecore8?
In Sitecore, you can specify shared presentation details for all versions of an item, in all languages, and you can specify different presentation details for each individual version of an item and for each language.
In this way, you can present a different composition of the layout
depending on the version and language of the item. For example, in a
multi-language solution, where you have different marketing strategies or
promotional offers that are relevant only for a specific language, you are not
restricted to display the same components for all languages.
For each item, you can specify the presentation details for:
The
shared layout – stores the presentation details
that are shared by all the versions of the item in every language. These
presentation details are based on the standard values of the template that the
item is based on.
The
final layout – stores the combination of the presentation details on the
selected version of the item and the presentation details of the shared layout.
This is the layout that your visitors see on your website.
For more detail see the link https://doc.sitecore.net/sitecore_experience_platform/content_authoring/getting_started_with_content_authoring/creating_content/edit_the_layout_of_an_item
4. What is computed index fields?
Computed index fields allows
you to perform additional processing before adding data to an index. For
example, you may want to store the contents of a droplink field
(the raw value being a GUID) as the target item's name, or a particular field
value from the target item.
5. What are untokenized and tokenized indexType?
untokenized: computed field is indexed
as a single string
tokenized: computed field is split up into
separate string or phrase for display /faceting purpose for ex: ‘Parameshwar Savale” will be
split up into “Parameshwar” and “Savale”. In case of untokenized it will store
it as a single string in index.
For more info please refer the blog post : http://www.sitecore.net/learn/blogs/technical-blogs/martina-welander-sitecore-blog/posts/2013/09/sitecore-7-search-tips-computed-fields.aspx
For more info please refer the blog post : http://www.sitecore.net/learn/blogs/technical-blogs/martina-welander-sitecore-blog/posts/2013/09/sitecore-7-search-tips-computed-fields.aspx
6. What are Dynamic placeholders and need of dynamic
placeholder in Sitecore?
Dynamic
Placeholders for Sitecore allows you to add the same placeholder name several
times. This can be across one or more renderings and even the same placeholder
can be used multiple times in a single rendering.
Dynamic
Placeholders simply use the rendering ID to create a unique placeholder name.
If more than one dynamic placeholder with the same name is in a rendering it
will also append on an incrementing number. Behind the scenes the Dynamic
Placeholders extracts the placeholder name to ensure the correct allowed
renderings are shown.
if we use rendering guid
for unique place holder name, the problem is placeholder key won’t be user
friendly, making it harder to identify which one of the dynamic placeholders
was actually being used by a
component.
Why – Suppose say we have two same
containers on the page(i.e. container is having two placeholders “ph_left”
& “ph_right”), the keys for the first container would dynamically be generated
as ph_left1, ph_right1 and then for the second container ph_left2, ph_right2
and so on.
For more info please see https://pageditor.wordpress.com/2016/02/09/define-the-key-for-dynamic-placeholders/
http://fes-sitecore.blogspot.in/2015/10/dynamic-placeholders-and-tabs-in.html
http://fes-sitecore.blogspot.in/2015/10/dynamic-placeholders-and-tabs-in.html
7. What are data providers in Sitecore & when to
implement custom data providers in Sitecore?
There are many ways of integrating external data with Sitecore but a data provider is one of the most powerful. You can get external data to display and behave as native Sitecore data -- to be browsed, rendered and related to other content within Sitecore.
Sitecore provides data providers that access the file system and the relational databases that the CMS supports, including SQL Server and Oracle. You can write data providers to support additional databases technologies;
Sitecore provides data providers that access the file system and the relational databases that the CMS supports, including SQL Server and Oracle. You can write data providers to support additional databases technologies;
You can also write
custom data providers that access external systems to expose data in external
systems as if it were native data in the CMS; for an example, the YouTube Integration Sitecore
Shared Source project that represents a YouTube video library as Sitecore
media items.
8. What is item rendering?
Item renderings allow
items to contain information about how to render themselves when rendered in
the context of another item. Refer http://www.sitecore.net/learn/blogs/technical-blogs/john-west-sitecore-blog/posts/2012/06/mvc-item-renderings-in-the-sitecore-aspnet-cms.aspx
@Html.Sitecore().ItemRendering(“id”) - renders
items using the rendering set in their "Renderers" field. This
enables us to create a component with different presentation for each item.
ItemRenderer:- Invokes
the mvc.renderRendering pipeline once for each of the item renderings specified
in the __Renderers field of an item.
Item rendering :
·
Allow you to render an item
with whatever rendering has been assigned to it
·
Let you render a collection of
items with differing renderings
Use Item Rendering only if you need
different HTML markup for each item.
If you only need different styling per item, just add a CssClass field to your
carousel slider template and and use CSS rules to do your styling. – for
detail http://www.matthewdresser.com/sitecore/carousel-sitecore-mvc-(part-3-item-renderings)
