Sitecore forum module – using TinyMCE instead of FreeTextBox

I wanted to replace the default WYSIWYG editor supplied with the Sitecore forum module (FreeTextBox) with TinyMCE, as it has better cross-browser compatibility.

Here’s how I did it…

Getting n random items

The project I’m working on involves showing various case studies. On my case study index page, I wanted to be able to show a selection of random case studies (say, up to four).

I can select all the relevant case studies using:
<xsl:variable name=”featuredall” select=”$sc_item//item[@template='case study' and sc:fld('featured',.)!='']” />

However, selecting a set of random items from this set isn’t as easy as it sounds. Using sc:random won’t work, because there’s a chance that the same case study will be used more than once.

After much head-scratching, I wrote an XSL Extension which returns a simple nodeset of random integers. This allows me to iterate through that nodeset, referring to the relevant position in my set of case study items…

Embedding Flash

On the home page of my site, I wanted to place an unspecified number of Flash “teasers”, each linking to somewhere in the site. I also needed to specify an image for each “teaser” to be used as a backup for users without Flash support.

This is how I did it…

The journey begins

OK, so a bit about me — I’m getting my hands dirty with Sitecore for the first time, having taken (and passed) SCD1 and SCD2 a while ago. I’ve got just a light dusting of ASP.NET, and am pretty much teaching myself as I go. I don’t work in a big team of developers (there are just two of us), so I pretty much rely on SDN, the Sitecore support portal, and various blogs when I’m trying to work out how to do something.

The flexibility of Sitecore’s content management framework is a strength, but it also means that there are often many different ways of approaching a given situation, and it can be bewildering. Also, a lot of the documentation and blogs assume a certain level of familiarity with the technology, and exposure to the product.

The idea of this blog is to record my small victories; things I’ve managed to get to work, and how I did it. Hopefully, it will help me to remember what I did, and it might help some other people who find themselves on a similar Sitecore journey.