Quick Continuous Integration/Deployment (CI/CD) workflow for Episerver DXP using Azure DevOps

There are a lot of questions on Episerver World on how to quickly deploy the code on Episerver DXP or more specifically how to set up Continuous Integration/Deployment (CI/CD) workflow for Episerver DXP. 

Simple Ways to Improve Episerver Websites Security

In my previous post, Basic Episerver Coding Best Practices I briefly mentioned the website security.  I thought I could go a little bit in details about basic security measure you can take in your ASP.NET website or in particular Episerver website. 

Each project comes with its own set of security requirements but I usually start from the following list to cover the basics. Keep in mind the list below are just suggestions and you can always opt-out or include other measures to quench your thirst for your website security. 

Basic Episerver Coding Best Practices

This is my first post on Episerver development best practices. In this one, I'll present the best practices that should be followed while working with Episerver - ASP.Net MVC framework. 

Here are some best practices you should always have in mind:

Advanced Task Manager: Gadget for Administration of Awaiting Review Tasks in Episerver

Currently, the User notification and Tasks (Awaiting Review) are disconnected and provide very basic information to the editors.





The idea behind this project is two-fold. The first purpose is to build a more versatile Approval Sequence task management gadget (for Content & Change Awaiting Review tasks) to extend the information available to the editors. The second purpose is to combine user notifications with tasks and empower Approvers to act on their tasks within a single interface

SeoBoost: Internationalization (Absolute Canonical, Alternate Links & Breadcrumbs) for Episerver

The Episerver Html.AlternateLinks() &Html.CanonicalLink()  HTML helpers are very useful for developers to implement Hreflang & Canonical Tags with minimal effort but they always render relative Url(s).

Google support both relative and absolute URLs but absolute URLs are preferred: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/139066?hl=en&rd=1

Editor Access to Episerver Categories Admin Functionality

Overview

EPiServer separates the functionality for website editors and site administrators by using two distinct user interfaces (Edit & Admin interface).
Edit mode offers granular control by allowing you to set access rights for content.

The requirement is to provide editor access to a particular admin functionality i.e Categories, without providing full access to the user to the admin interface.

Invalidate the Site or Page Cache In EPiServer

Background

Recently I was asked for a code snippet to manually invalidate site and individual page cache in EPiServer.

My first impression was why you want to go out of the way to manually invalidate site or a page cache when EPiServer automatically takes cares of it in a brilliant way?. It's not something you do in your daily EPiServer development routine, and being a big believer of "No such thing as a stupid question", it got me curious as I had some idea about doing this in theory but never actually get a chance to write a code to invalidate site or page cache.

The idea was to stress test load balancing environment where EPiserver event providers are doing the cache invalidation job but to disrupt their job through an invalidation cache web service. Later create a proof of concept in load balancing environment where EPiserver events providers for invalidating cache are disabled and on published event in CMS, a code gets triggers manually invalidation cache on site or page.

Episerver CMS Version Gadget Republish Breaks Download Option for Media Content

I came across an annoying issue with EPiServer media management related to versioning in EPiServer CMS from version 10 .0.1 onward.

SQL Error SQL72014 and SQL72045 When Importing a BACPAC

Problem

I was trying to import a BACPAC that was generated on a different server to my local development environment using SQL Server Management Studio 17.1 "Import Data-tier Application" wizard and received the following error