How to Move the Page Editor Ribbon

Sitecore CMS 6 introduced the awesome Page Editor (along with the Page Designer and improved preview and debugging). When using the Page Editor etc., a ribbon is inserted on the page with relevant commands:


By default, the ribbon is inserted as the first element inside the server-side FORM-tag on the page, which means that in most situations the ribbon will fill the entire page width and be positioned at the very top of the page.

Moving the Page Editor Ribbon
But suppose you want to place the Page Editor Ribbon somewhere else on the page? How would you do that? The solution is luckily simple (although not necessarily very obvious).

You simply insert a placeholder with key="webedit" somewhere on a layout, sublayout or in a rendering. This will typically look like this:

Using this placeholder, you can for example place the Page Editor Ribbon in the top of the content area:


And that's it. The placeholder is used for both the Page Editor, the Page Designer, the Preview and the Debugger, so everything will show up in a consistent location on the website.

Happy coding :o)

More SIP Documentation Available

A new "Sitecore Intranet Main Settings" document is now availble for Sitecore Intranet Portal customers and partners:
http://sdn.sitecore.net/products/sitecore%20intranet/documentation.aspx

The document explains in detail where and how the fields on the Main Settings item are used. Most of the fields are illustrated with screenshots of the frontend to give a better understanding of where each field appear or what parts of the site it affects.

Additional Documentation on its Way
Also, the SIP Team and Documentation Team have been working on documentation for the Skin Settings. So look out for more cool SIP documentation soon :o)

CMS 5.3 to CMS 6 Database Conversion Tool Released

I am proud to announce that the CMS 5.3 to CMS 6 Database Conversion Tool was officially released this week.

The tool can be found on SDN as usual:
http://sdn5.sitecore.net/Resources/Tools/V53_to_V6.aspx

Be sure to read the documentation before using this tool. Most of the issues that was reported for the beta version have been fixed, but we still have a small number of known issues left.

Sitecore Intranet Portal 2.2 Released

Sitecore Intranet Portal 2.2 was officially released on SDN last week:
http://sdn5.sitecore.net/Products/Sitecore%20Intranet.aspx

This release is a great achievement for the SIP Team, and I wish to thank everyone who helped make this new release a reality both inside and outside Sitecore.

So far I've received some very positive feedback from the techical sales guys that I offered a pre-release version to try out. So I'm glad that our partners and customers now also can take advantage of all the new features and improvements in the product.

So have fun, no matter if you're installing the demo site or the clean distribution - or if you're simply curious and read through the release notes or the updated documentation.

Beta version of CMS 6 Database Conversion Tool

It's a great pleasure for me to announce that a beta version of the CMS 5.3 to CMS 6 Database Conversion Tool has just been published on SDN:
http://sdn5.sitecore.net/Resources/Tools/V53_to_V6.aspx

New Features
The main improvements compared to the alpha version is that all the conversion steps now can be executed automatically instead of having to manually start each conversion step.

Also, we've implemented a small wizard that makes the user interaction more intuitive.

Fixed Issues
Please refer to the release notes on SDN for a list of improvements and fixed issues.

Known Issues
The list of known issues in the documentation has been updated based on the issues reported for the alpha version.

Updated Documentation
The documentation has been updated to reflect the user interface improvements.

CMS 6 Database Conversion Tool alpha2

A new alpha of the CMS 5.3 to CMS 6 Database Conversion Tool is available on SDN:
http://sdn5.sitecore.net/Resources/Tools/V53_to_V6.aspx

A single issue has been fixed: after a migration all presentation controls had the same "uid" in the Renderings field. This could lead to problems in the Page Editor if a rendering is placed multiple times inside the same placeholder.

Preview of CMS 6 Database Conversion Tool

During the last months, I've been busy with several exiting projects. One of them is a tool to help Sitecore partners and customers to upgrade to Sitecore CMS 6.

So say hello to the "Sitecore CMS 5.3 to CMS 6 Database Conversion Tool". As the name indicates, it will upgrade V5.3 databases (currently V5.3.1 rev. 071114 or newer) to V6.

Originally it was our aim to release this tool at the same date as V6, but we felt that quality and usability were more important so we decided to spend extra time and resources for the implementation.

We still have some work to do before the tool is as easy to use as we would like. But we also realize that many of our partners and customers are eager to learn more about the possible upgrade strategies to CMS 6.

Alpha release coming soon
Therefore, we have decided to make an alpha release available. The UI for the alpha is a bit more "rough" than the final version will be, and it takes more user interaction and manual procedures than the final version. Also, it has not gone through extensive testing yet.

So can you use the alpha for anything yet? Sure you can!

What the tool does
The tool can upgrade your V5.3.1 (or newer) databases to V6, so that you can start investigating at the complexity of upgrading to V6. Typically it takes ½-1 hour to convert databases if you have a bit of experience with the tool, so expect to use a couple of hours for the first attempts. Also, some of the operations (for example converting masters to branches and transferring archived and deleted items) can take considerable time if there is a lot of data to convert.

For sites that primarily use XSLT renderings, such as the Sitecore Starter Kit, they might run "out of the box" after the conversion. But for most solutions, you'll have to update your .NET code to make it compile (for example due to the changes in the security model between V5.3 and V6, but also to make the code output tags for use with the Page Editor which is often done by taking advantage of the new FieldRenderer class).

When to expect it?
We expect the alpha to be released on SDN by the end of this week.

Feedback
I look very much forward to the reactions from the community after the alpha is released. I expect it to be useful for a lot of people. But it is an alpha, so I also expect people to run into all sorts of problems.

For help with the alpha, I suggest that you use the SDN Forums.

You can submit bug reports to Sitecore Support who will forward them to the Project Team (don't expect an answer regarding the alpha - Sitecore Support will simply register the issue).