Installing Windows 8 Developer Preview on VirtualBox (and resolving error 0x8007045D)

I was disappointed to find out that you can't run the developer preview of Windows 8 using Microsoft Virtual PC. But after reading several success stories about installing Windows 8 on Oracle's VirtualBox VM I decided to give it a try using this walk-through. During my first attempts I was greeted with this cryptic error message each time:

"Windows cannot install the required files. Make sure all of the files required for installation are available, and restart the installation. Error code: 0x8007045D".

This error would appear during the second step in the Windows 8 installation process, right after "Expanding Windows Files..." hit about 80%. After researching VirtualBox settings, I found that the first English comment on the bottom of this post resolved my issue. (So it's worked for at least two people now).

Basically, the fix is to make sure to check "Use host I/O cache" under Admin...Storage...(highlight SATA Controller):

Once I changed this setting Windows 8 installed just fine, and the "Expanding Windows Files..." step of the installation took about 1 minute, compared to 15-20 minutes during the failed installations.

Sitefinity 4 News Items Not Displaying Author Name

We just got through a minor issue involving NewsItems in a Sitefinity 4.1 implementation. The problem is that even though the administrators were specifying an author when creating NewsItems, THEIR NAME was being displayed instead of the author no matter what.

The solution is actually pretty straightforward - The layouttemplate for news items doesn't contain a field for author, even though it's entered on the back end. Instead it uses <sf:personprofileview runat="server"> which displays the first name and last name of the user posting the NewsItem. You'll have to go into the LayoutTemplate for single NewsItems (Design..WidgetTemplates...FullNewsItem in Sitefinity admin) and replace the personprofileview tag with the author name:

Default layouttemplate code:
<div class="sfnewsAuthorAndDate">
<asp:literal runat="server" text="<%$ Resources:Labels, By %>">
<sf:personprofileview runat="server">|<sf:fieldlistview format="{PublicationDate.ToLocal():MMM dd, yyyy}" id="PublicationDate" runat="server">
</sf:fieldlistview>
</div>

Revised:
<div class="sfnewsAuthorAndDate">
<asp:literal runat="server" text="<%$ Resources:Labels, By %>">
<asp:Literal runat="server" Text='<%# Eval("Author")%>' /> | <sf:fieldlistview format="{PublicationDate.ToLocal():MMM dd, yyyy}" id="PublicationDate" runat="server">
</sf:fieldlistview>
</div>

ASP.Net Duplicate Section Defined Error - Is Only Defined Once

I had just set up a new local development environment for a solution already up and running in a staging environment.

The first time I tried to run the app, I got this error message:

Config Error There is a duplicate 'system.web.extensions/scripting/scriptResourceHandler' section

Here are the exception details:

HTTP Error 500.19 - Internal Server Error
The requested page cannot be accessed because the related configuration data for the page is invalid.
Detailed Error Information
Module IIS Web Core
Notification Unknown
Handler Not yet determined
Error Code 0x800700b7
Config Error There is a duplicate 'system.web.extensions/scripting/scriptResourceHandler' section defined
Config File \\?\C:\SVN\TestSite\web.config

...but if you look in the web.config, the scriptResourceHandler is only defined once. However, if you're using .Net Framework 4.0, this entry already exists in the machine.config - hence the error. So the solution is, either remove this and other duplicate entries from your web config, or if it's an option, change your site in IIS from using the Framework 4.0 application pool back to the Framework 2.0 application pool.

Creating a Sitefinity 3.7 Custom ControlDesigner

Here’s a simplified summary of the process of creating a custom designer to edit properties for a Sitefinity control:

For simple text fields, edit fields are automatically generated just by exposing properties of type string on the user control.

...but for an elaborate field editing interface on a Sitefinity control here's a diagram and overview:

(apologies for the VB code :))
In App_Code
BaseControl.cs (contains the properties on our usercontrol we need to edit)
Inherits UserControl
ControlDesigner.cs (control displays the editing UI and sets the properties on BaseControl)
Inherits Telerik…ControlDesigner

The control itself must inherit from BaseControl.cs - this later allows it to be cast to type DesignedControl from the ControlDesigner.

It must also have a control designer specified as a class attribute. ex:
[Telerik.Framework.Web.Design.ControlDesigner("ControlDesigner")]

To layout the UI for the Control designer, you need to create a separate LayoutTemplate user control, and specify it’s path as the ControlDesigner’s LayoutTemplatePath property.

The ControlDesigner references the LayoutTemplate’s properties like:
base.Container.GetControl("litDataString", true)

and sets the property on the usercontrol like:
((DesignedControl)BaseControl).Data = “xyz”

For simpler, unstyled layouts, you can get away without a LayoutTemplate and just specifying the controls’ positions via css in the ControlDesigner.

Here’s a more in-depth Sitefinity walk-through and sample code.

Sitefinity 4.1 problem uploading images with admin tools

We suddenly encountered an issue when uploading images using the Sitefinity 4.1 back-end admin tools. Now suddenly, when the content creators attempted to upload an image, they were suddenly getting a 404 error with the message:

Please review the following URL and make sure that it is spelled correctly.
Requested URL:
/Telerik.Sitefinity.AsyncImageUploadHandler.ashx

...Of course this functionality worked just fine in the development environment. The entire site was republished to staging, but they still were experiencing this issue of not being able to locate AsyncImageUploadHandler.ashx.

After examining everything, it ends up that there were several new httphandlers added in the system.webServer section in the local web.config that needed to be added to the staging site's config, specifically in this case the missing offender was:

<add name="Telerik.Sitefinity.AsyncImageUploadHandler" path="Telerik.Sitefinity.AsyncImageUploadHandler.ashx" verb="*" type="Telerik.Sitefinity.Modules.Libraries.Web.AsyncImageUploadHandler, Telerik.Sitefinity" />

I assume these settings were added when we upgraded to 4.1, SP1. According to the upgrade instructions, upgrading locally and then publishing everything except the Sitefinity configuration files to staging will automagically update the remote site to SP1. But you also need to make sure to merge the updates to your web.config as well.