Disable Default Search On Sitecore Media Library: Sitecore 7+

Hey Friends!
What's up? How's your Sitecore? Got chance to work on Sitecore 7+?

If you have started exploring Sitecore 7+ then you may have observed newly added "Search" tab when you select any item from content tree. It is really nice feature in update!

Scenario:
If you got chance to select "Media Library" then you may have observed that by default "Media Library" item search and show all media items. This may result in performance issue when you have loads of media items. I found that many times people are asking about this, so thought to blog it which can help my Sitecore friends!

So If you want to disable this default Media Library search then this post will help you.

Reason:
The reason is "Media Library" has Default Bucket Query set to "text:*&" that shows all media items.

Solution 1:
In order to disable default search on "Media Library" item selection, you can simply remove that "Default Bucket Query" value and make the field value empty.

Now if you go again and select the "Media Library" item, you will see that it will NOT search any media item and will load Media Library item quickly resulting in performance gain.

Solution 2:
If you don't want to remove Default Bucket Query but instead you want to change order of tabs in such a way that Sitecore should show first "Folder" tab and then "Search" tab. So that whenever you select "Media Library" item it will NOT take much time to load the item.

To apply this solution, Go to Configure tab - select Editors option and then Change Order of "Search" item as suggested below.

Have a Happy Siecore Journey!

Trick To Add Custom Application Option in Sitecore 7+

Are you struggling to add custom application option in Sitecore Menu?

If you are using Sitecore 6.6 and not able to add application option in Sitecore menu then please visit Jeremy Davis's blog - he has explained the solution very well!

But If you are using Sitecore 7+ then this post will help you.

In Sitecore 6.6, you need to remove .aspx extension from your Application Shortcut item to start displaying in Sitecore menu. But that solution will not work if you are using Sitecore 7+.

In Sitecore 7+ you need to add URL attribute in raw value of Application Field as suggested in below screen-shots.

If you observe any of default application shortcut, you will find this url attribute in Application field raw value.

But when you add your custom application shortcut, no such url attribute is getting added.

Hence you need to add url attribute manually to fix this issue.

 After adding URL attribute, refresh the Content Editor and you will now see your Application option in Sitecore Menu.

Enjoy your Sitecore Journey!

Few Sitecore Tips and Tricks

1) How to allow some characters in your Sitecore instance like parentheses?
For example - you want to allow parantheses in Sitecore item name. How can you achieve that?

Solution:
<setting name="ItemNameValidation" value="^[\w\*\$][\w\s\-\$]*(\(\d{1,}\)){0,1}$"/>

<setting name="ItemNameValidation" value="^[\w\*\$][\w\)\(\s\-\$]*(\(\d{1,}\)){0,1}$" />


2) Are you not able to see Sitecore folder or item is in Content Editor tree? But you are able to see it using Sitecore search.

Solution:
Clearing Content Editor cache by IIS Reset will solve above issue.


3) Why does Sitecore remove "-" from page name?

If you have below setting to replace space with "-" then ask client/user NOT to create page with "-" otherwise "-" will be replaced with " " (space) by Sitecore.

<replace mode="on" find=" " replaceWith="-"/>

Solution:
Don't create page with "-" if above setting is ON.

Have a happy Sitecore Journey!

How to increase Sitecore Field height?

This is very simple post but sometimes makes you think how to achieve it. So thought to blog it which may help Sitecore newbies.

If you are looking for increasing Sitecore field height in order to increase visiblity area, then this post will help you for the same. We will see Sitecore Multiline field example to demonstrate this post.

Let's see - below screen shows the default height of Multiline textbox.

Sometimes you want to increase height of Sitecore Multiline textbox in order to get more visibility area. This can be achieved by simply setting "Style" field under "Appearance" section of Sitecore Multiline textbox as suggested below.

You can see now there is more visibility area which will help user to read text with more comfort.

That's all.
Have a Happy Sitecore Journey!

Sitecore Informatics: A Newly Launched Module To Track Your Sitecore Website Information At One Place

Howdy my Sitecore mates!

In your day to day work you may have felt sometimes that - it would be really helpful if you can get few frequently required Sitecore information at one place.

The Sitecore information such as:

• Total number of Sites in your Sitecore instance
• Total number of Sublayouts in your Sitecore instance along with referrer pages and caching parameters
• Total number of Templates in your Sitecore instance along with referrer pages
• Total number of Content Items in your Sitecore instance
• Total number of Media Items in your Sitecore instance
• Total number of Users in your Sitecore instance

Now this is possible by newly launched Sitecore Module - Sitecore Informatics
Yes, Sitecore Journey is excited to launch a new Sitecore Module - Sitecore Informatics and we hope that this will benefit many Sitecore people.

You can download it from Sitecore MarketPlace:
https://marketplace.sitecore.net/Modules/Sitecore_Informatics.aspx

Step by step guide to download and install this tool is at:
http://nileshthakkar.github.io/Sitecore-Informatics/

This is how Sitecore Informatics looks like:

  Keep watching below screen-shots to check out what is inside this module:

Hope this tool will make your Sitecore Life Easy!!!

Have a happy Sitecore Journey!