Sitefinity Toolkit 1.0: Introduction

It's no secret that I am a devout fan of the Sitefinity content management system by Telerik. But in developing a handful of sites over the past few years, I've discovered that I'm doing a lot of things over and over that I wish were part of the Sitefinity core.

That's where the Sitefinity Toolkit comes in. After months of hacking, it I've put together a collection of several tools I've developed since I started working with the CMS in 2007. In this post, I'll just be giving a brief overview of what features are included. Future posts in the coming days and weeks will explain in detail how to enable and use each feature (though feel free to hack away and email me with any questions or comments).

Sitefinity Toolkit 1.0 Features

NOTE: the Sitefinity Toolkit is only available for the ASP.NET 3.5 versions of Sitefinity.

Sitemap

Automatically generates /sitemap.ashx, parsing through not only all your site's public pages, but also news, events, and generic content items!

Note: Version 1.0 only supports the default generic content provider, so if you have multiple content providers for the Generic Content Module, only the default one will be used to generate the sitemap.

Smooth-Menu

Autmoatically generates a SEO-friendly, bare-bones navigation menu based on your sites sitemap.

Search Index Providers

Add Events and Generic Content (default provider only) items to your search engine. Also available is a Latest News indexer, which will add only non-expired items to the index.

Mobile Browser Detection

Uses the Wurfl API to detect mobile browsers to show these users a mobile-friendly version of your website.

Lowercase Urls

Intercepts requests with and 301 Redirects to the lower-case version of your url (for search engine optimization)

Custom 404 Page

Show your Sitefinity search results to your users based on the non-existant url they tried to visit.

API

Retreive both News and Events from your site's Default Providers in JSON format. Helpful for constructing Javascript widgets or feeding information to other Sitefinity sites.

Event Reminders

Create Outlook Reminders for your Event items (default provider only)

Workflow Notifications (Sitefinity Standard Only)

Automatically send emails to approvers or publishers at appropriate steps in the workflow for News, Events, and Generic Content items (default provider only).

Download

Visit the Sitefinity Toolkit 1.0 page in my software section for the latest download information. As always your comments and suggestions are welcome.

Important Notice

I have tested this toolkit extensively with Sitefinity Standard 3.7 SP1, since that's the version I currently use. I've also done some testing with Sitefinity Community Edition 3.7 SP1, which is what is used on this website. However, this website runs in Medium trust so I haven't made use of all the features.

Please report any issues to josh@selarom.net. If I get enough interest, I'll start a public tracker.

For the most up to date information, downloads, and updates, visit the Sitefinity Toolkit Page in my software section.

Plans for Version 2.0

I didn't get to cram everything into the toolkit that I wanted to, so here's a preview of what I'm working on for the next version.

• Offline Mode - Allows the site to be offline to the public, while still allowing the admin section to be accessible
• Calendar (iCal) Feed - generates an iCal feed for your users to subscribe based on your Sitefinity Events
• Page Notifications - Send notifications to Approvers and Publishers at appropriate steps in the workflow for Page changes
• Add support for and allow you to choose from multiple custom providers

The latest version of the Sitefinity Toolkit will always be available for download here.

This toolkit is and always will be FREE to use and distribute as you wish (although I currently have no plans to publish the source code). If you enjoy my work, please consider making a donation to help me expand my music studio (see widget on the sidebar).