Sitecore – Unlock locked item by non-admins

This is a very simple module that will help the non-admin content authors to unlock the locked items. The user has to be in a defined role to access this module.

• A button called Unlock will be added to Publish chunk.
• Add the Content admin who needs access to unlock item to the role - SitecoreContentAuthorUnlock
• To unlock, content admin can click the Unlock button for locked item and item will be unlocked. 

Package will install these items

• An assembly
• Sitecore role – “SitecoreContentAuthorUnlock”
• Configuration file in Includes folder
• Button in Publish chunk (core item)

You can download the Sitecore package here and install it using Installation Wizard.

[Obsolete] Disable xDB in Sitecore 7.5 with Sitecore Analytics Enabled for Basic Personalization

In our project, we use Sitecore 7.5 and we enabled Sitecore Analytics so that we can do basic personalization in the renderings. In Sitecore 7.5, we do not have CMS-Only mode like Sitecore 8.1. If we do not have xDB database setup, we have seen many repeated Mongo DB errors in the log files. Moreover these repeated logs slows down the authoring and production environment.

We contacted Sitecore to provide a patch to disable the xDB errors and it seems it is not possible in Sitecore 7.5 but to upgrade our Sitecore instance to 8.1.

As a workaround to disable these errors, we went ahead and disabled background services and other related configurations in Sitecore analytics. This has disabled the unnecessary errors related to Mongo DB and analytics but Sitecore basic personalization was still working for our renderings. 

Warning: These configuration changes may affect other functionalities related to Sitecore Analytics. Due to lack of documentation on these steps, I am marking commenting and marking this blog as Obsolete. 

• In \App_Config\Include\Sitecore.Analytics.config, modify the config values.
  

  <setting name="Analytics.LogLevel" value="None" />
  <setting name="Analytics.PerformLookup" value="false" />

• In \App_Config\Include\Sitecore.Analytics.config, comment out these lines.
  

  <!--<hooks>
  	<hook type="Sitecore.Analytics.ConfigLoader, Sitecore.Analytics" />
  	<hook type="Sitecore.Analytics.BackgroundServiceLoader, Sitecore.Analytics" />
  </hooks>
  <sessionEnd>
  	<processor type="Sitecore.Analytics.Pipelines.SessionEnd.RaiseVisitEnd, Sitecore.Analytics"/>
  </sessionEnd>
  <scheduling>
  	<agent type="Sitecore.Analytics.Tasks.EmailReportsTask, Sitecore.Analytics" method="Run" interval="0:00:00">
  		<DatabaseName>master</DatabaseName>
  	</agent>
  </scheduling>-->

• In \App_Config\Include\Sitecore.Analytics.Processing.Aggregation.ProcessingPools.config, comment out these lines.
  

  <!--<pipelines>
  	<initialize>
  		<processor type="Sitecore.Analytics.Automation.Pipelines.Initialize.RegisterDataModelExtensions, 
          								Sitecore.Analytics.Automation.MongoDB" />
  	</initialize>
  </pipelines>-->

• In \App_Config\Include\Sitecore.Analytics.Processing.Aggregation.Services.config, comment out these tags completely.
  
• In \App_Config\Include\Sitecore.Analytics.Processing.Services.config, comment out these tags completely.
  
  
• In \App_Config\Include\Sitecore.Analytics.Tracking.config, comment out these lines.
  
  
• In \App_Config\Include\Sitecore.Analytics.Tracking.Database.config, comment out these lines.
  
  

Black and White Powerful World - Linux

Recently I got a chance to work in a migration activity where we migrated JAVA, NET and PHP sites from a set of Rackspace Public Cloud servers with RackConnect® V2 to a set of Rackspace Public Cloud Servers with RackConnect® V3.

RackConnect® in Rackspace enables us to leverage dedicated servers for our Public Cloud servers. Refer here.

I am not a LINUX admin but in this article, I would like to write all the commands which I learnt from this activity.

Linux:

Rsync is used to copy or sync files from one location to another. It can be two servers.

-      This command will sync files from remote server (192.168.21.20) to destination server (i.e. current server). This can changed in other way.

-      It will show you the progress of the synchronization.

-      Important thing to note is the slash.

§  If only the items from source folder has to be copied inside the destination folder, a slash has to be added in the destination path.

§  If we do not keep it, source folder with all the files will be copied in destination folder. Like /data/site1/site1/….

This article will be updated.