I've often found it helpful to use ASP.NET's Page Trace to identify performance problems with my dynamic pages. However, database queries are frequently responsible for performance problems.  Because of this, I began displaying SQL via the Page Trace. This let me see the SQL being executed to render a page. It also let me see how much time the SQL was taking to execute. As I began toying with LINQ to SQL I found myself missing the ability to see the SQL being executed to render my pages. As it turns out, it's very easy to ...

I love the Sitefinity "Site Map".  I love how it makes the organization of my web site self-evident.  It is for this reason I wasn't terribly enthused with the "Images & Documents" module that was included with Sitefinity 3.2.  This module took resources out of the "Site Map" to be managed and organized elsewhere.  I also found it impossible to include a single link/reference to a file I was managing via the "Images & Documents" module.  Instead my options seemed to only be "Gallery" or "Download List". My desire to ...

I have been struggling off & on for weeks to upgrade this web site to Sitefinity 3.2.  If you're interested read about this journey here and here. Please understand, I'm a big fan of Sitefinity and Telerik.  But with regard to Sitefinity 3.2 it's fairly obvious little thought or testing was devoted to "upgrading", specifically with regard to Sitefinity modules.  Significant changes were introduced into the Blogs module, as well as other modules.  The net effect: upgrading to 3.2 caused my data to disappear.  Telerik later released raw SQL ...

"Learn to Blog effectively to build traffic and relationships in just 4 hours..." While browsing the Internet I stumbled upon a "blogging seminar" advertisement touting the preceding claim. Like most web programmers I have, at times in my career, worked for various Internet marketing consultants.  I have often found this to be a completely soul-sucking ordeal.  In my experience, many of these "cutting-edge consultants" hear about technology trends years after they emerge onto the scene.  They get a brief explanation from the "geek" they keep chained to a desk and ...

On the Sitefinity forums Erik asked how to display an expanded Site Map.  Sitefinity includes a "Site Treeview" control that comes close to accomplishing this.  However, this control starts in a "collapsed" state and I have not been able to find a way to easily coax it into an "expanded" state. The good news is that we can create a Site Map Sitefinity UserControl fairly easily using the RadTreeView.  The control described below simply binds the ASP.NET "SiteMapDataSource" to a RadTreeView control.  It then fully expands the RadTreeView.  Here is ...

If there is one thing blogging has taught me, it's that coming up with original content & ideas is hard work.  So I decided to do what everyone else is doing and simply use RSS feeds to artifically inflate the size of my web site.  In this way I can generate tons of content for my web site without having to do a lot of time-consuming "work". RSS is the wave of the future and I predict in 5 years the Internet will consist of roughly 100 unique pages.  These ...

Sitefinity has 2 "edit modes" (Overlay & Classic) that can be used to edit pages:   The "Overlay" edit mode grays-out areas of the page that cannot be altered; while the "Classic" edit mode displays the unmodified page.  "Classic" gives a better representation of what the page actually looks like, while "Overlay" makes it easier to see what parts of the page you can alter.  Both edit modes have advantages & disadvantages. However, the "Overlay" edit mode can sometimes be fickle due to the CSS magic being applied.  While using ...