GDPR and disabling Sitecore Tracker lead to Exception in Sitecore.Analytics.Media.MediaRequestEventHandler.OnMediaRequest
As many Europe-based businesses we had to comply with GDPR legislation, which requires us to not track analytical data from visitors without their consent. When it comes to Sitecore 8.x, this requires to implicitly stop the Sitecore Tracker from initializing unless the corresponding Conseny Cookie has been accepted: So, problem solved right? Well, not exactly, […]
The path "{E18F4BC6-46A2-4842-898B-B6613733F06F}" was not found.
You might get this error when setting up a new Sitecore instance somewhere. The item in question is a /sitecore/layout/Devices item that Sitecore needs in order to operate normally. There can be several reasons why this is happening: You are running Sitecore up to 9.x, and your master / web databases are corrupted, and they miss this […]
The Ultimate XConnect Troubleshooting Guide
Many of us have been there: whether it's a matter of containerizing an existing solution, moving an instance to a different machine, or even just setting up our local development environment, many Sitecore developers had to square off with a non-functional XConnect instance. Last week was the third time in my career, so I decided […]
XConnect on Windows 11: ERR_CONNECTION_RESET error when using HTTPS
Problem This week I moved my local development Sitecore 10 instance to a new laptop running Windows 11; all seemed well, except for XConnect, that mysteriously only worked without HTTPS. I would constantly get ERR_CONNECTION_RESET, with nothing being recorded in either XConnect, IIS or Events log: All the while the TLS Certificate was reported invalid. […]
CS0012: The type 'System.Object' is defined in an assembly that is not referenced.
I was setting up my Sitecore instance(s) on a new laptop, when this error reared its ugly head and kept me stuck for a good hour. Looking online there are many reasons why this showed up, but in my case, all I had to do was adding this line under configuration/system.web/compilation/assemblies: <add assembly="netstandard, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=cc7b13ffcd2ddd51"/> […]
Error when deleting a language in Sitecore: "Could not parse the language"
While decommissioning a section of a website in a language that we no longer support, I found myself in need of removing the language altogether; trying to delete the item, however, resulted in the following error: Could not parse the language Note that a custom language name must be on the form A brief headscratch […]
The type initializer for 'Sitecore.Install.Serialization.IOUtils' threw an exception.
Today I've been having this problem out of the blue: "The type initializer for 'Sitecore.Install.Serialization.IOUtils' threw an exception." Searching for this error in relation to Sitecore usually points to Newtonsoft.Json.dll as the culprit, but in my case it was Mvp.Xml.dll, that some NuGet or somesuch upgraded to a higher version thus causing this error. I reverted […]
Adding Security to a Mongo instance on Windows Server
We're moving our server infrastructure to a new host, and as part of the new configuration the Mongo instance will have its own server, as opposed as living on the same server of the SQL database. I took this as an opportunity to set up proper security for it. IP restriction The first thing to […]
TinyMCE for Sitecore: usage and configuration
This is a quick introduction/configuration for the TinyMCE Module for Sitecore module I'm writing and that I eventually aim to release on the Sitecore Marketplace. It allows usage of the "Insert Sitecore Media" and "Insert Sitecore Link" functionalities, implemented as a TinyMCE plugin. It contains no references to Telerik web controls. After installing the all-in-one Package, […]
Sitecore Analytics: Custom Dimensions and Segments
In Sitecore Analytics, a Dimension represents a set of key/values pair which is updated daily. Each entry contains, for each key, a class called SegmentMetricsValue that contains the following fields: Visits, a custom Value, Bounces, Conversions, Time on Site, Page Views, and Count. Each of those can be arbitrarily assigned, and the method that calculates […]