Sitecore Docs - Tech Tips by GS

If you are restoring a database on your local or if you have forgotten your admin password to Sitecore, you can default it back to admin/b. To do so, copy and run the sql below - UPDATE [aspnet_Membership] SET [Password] = 'qOvF8m8F2IcWMvfOBjJYHmfLABc=' , [PasswordSalt] = 'OM5gu45RQuJ76itRvkSPFw==' , [IsApproved] = '1' , [IsLockedOut] = '0' WHERE UserId IN ( SELECT UserId FROM dbo.aspnet_Users WHERE UserName = 'sitecore\Admin' ) The above query also unlocks your account if it was locked due to wrong password attempts. Now you can log into Sitecore using the credentials  username - admin  and  password - b . This query works on all versions of Sitecore, including 8, 9, 10.1, 10.2, and 10.3.

In the world of Sitecore development, I often meet many professionals who are certified, highly experienced, and even recognized as MVPs. While their Sitecore knowledge is impressive, what surprises me is how often they lack basic software engineering fundamentals . This gap becomes obvious in real-world projects — especially when deadlines loom or post-launch support begins. Sitecore Can Get You the Job, But It Won’t Keep the Client Happy Knowing Sitecore well can definitely help you land a job. But what really earns client trust — and long-term success — is the quality of your deliverables and the value you bring to their business . As a developer, you're not just building a website. You're building the digital face of a brand . First impressions matter — your work could help the client grow their reputation or even drive new business. The software you create is part of something that may have taken years of hard work to establish. So how can you go from being a good Siteco...

A fellow Sitecorian reached out to me for help on an issue related to Sitecore pod deployments in Kubernetes. They built a web application based on Sitecore 10.4 Headless SXA on Azure Kubernetes Services Cluster and used Azure DevOps for CICD> The Problem We found that the latest code is not getting released to our Sitecore pods. We checked the release pipelines and Deploy Application Specifications steps has logs that mentioned that cm and cd pods are unchanged which means it did not find any differences in the build deployed to Sitecore pods and the build downloaded in pipeline. The Solution We discussed this with our Sitecore rep and he mentioned this is a known issue with Kuberenetes and it occurs as latest tag is used for fetching images from Container Repository. These images get cached and there are chances that the latest image is not picked correctly from Container Registry.  I tried googling for it and I found the following stackoverflow link talks about similar issue ...

The Problem While running the installation steps for setting up Sitecore XP in AKS, we found that the CM/CD pods are not running. This was primarily due to the fact that CM/CD pods were waiting on other pods like xDBsearch to come to running state due to wait-initialization. After waiting for significant time, we found that xDBsearch pod is not coming up and it probably has an issue. Ran kubectl logs command to check xdbsearch logs and found below entries -  The Solution This error definitely implied that the shard databases have some issue. We deleted the shard databases and ran the init job again. When the init job completes, it is advisable to check logs by running kubectl logs command. This will inform if the job was successful or did it errored out at some point. Once the shard databases were recreated, we recreated the pods and this time the xdbsearch pods came up fine. Thanks for reading :)

Hello!! This year, I have mostly worked on Sitecore 10.1.1 as part of IT team of an accounting services organization. Due to my nature of work, I dont have exposure to different projects exploring variety of new Sitecore tools and technologies (like my other fellow MVPs have), but I have used this year to upgrade my learning and dig deeper into Sitecore XP on which I primarily work. Below are my contributions this year -  Sitecore Blogs Below are the links to all my blogs which I have published in year 2022 on Sitecore.  https://ghanendras.blogspot.com/2024/11/sitecore-installation-on-kubernetes.html https://ghanendras.blogspot.com/2024/11/sitecore-bug-502996-checkbox-rendering.html https://ghanendra-singh.vercel.app/posts/customize-sitecore-desktop https://ghanendras.blogspot.com/2024/11/sitecore-solr-error-keepererrorcode.html https://ghanendras.blogspot.com/2024/11/cannot-find-options-for.html https://ghanendras.blogspot.com/2024/11/links-db-in-sitecore-not-consistent.html ...

Introduction Recently, a community member attempted to install Sitecore 10.4 on a Kubernetes (K8s) cluster and reached out to me regarding the challenges they faced. Despite following Sitecore's standard installation document, they encountered issues due to their limited knowledge of Kubernetes. This blog post summarizes their experience and serves as a reference for other developers in a similar situation. Steps for Installation To successfully set up a Sitecore instance in a K8s cluster, follow these detailed steps: Prerequisites Access to Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) : Ensure you have the ability to create namespaces and clusters in AKS. Having a team member knowledgeable in Kubernetes is highly beneficial. Local Tools : Install Azure CLI, Chocolatey, and Helm on your local machine. You'll be needing these while executing commands in PowerShell. Cluster Specifications Ensure your cluster meets these specifications: Kubernetes 1.27.x or later Windows Server 2019 version 18...

 The Problem In a recent project based on Sitecore 10.1.4, I encountered an intriguing issue with Sitecore’s rendering parameters. Specifically, I was working with a rendering parameter template that included Checkbox fields. The standard values for these fields were set to “checked”  Observed Behavior When reading these values for a page rendering, I noticed the following behavior: Unchecking the Checkbox: The value remained “1”. Unchecking the Checkbox and adding another rendering parameter with a value: The checkbox value became null (as expected). This led me to question why the checkbox value remained “1” when unchecked, unless a value was added to the one of the rendering parameter field. The Analysis Upon further investigation and raising a support ticket with Sitecore, it was confirmed that this behavior is indeed a bug in the current Sitecore version. The checkbox rendering parameter appears to read from the standard value if unchecked, which is not the expected behav...

 The Problem We use SOLRcloud for SOLR with Zookeeper. While performing my routine development activities, I encountered that my local SOLR instance is giving a weird error as shown in snapshot below -  The Solution We checked SOLR logs and could see error like below repeating continuously -  2024-11-10 22:31:31.216 ERROR (zkConnectionManagerCallback-7-thread-1-EventThread) [   ] o.a.s.c.LeaderElector node exists => org.apache.zookeeper.KeeperException$NodeExistsException: KeeperErrorCode = NodeExists for /overseer_elect/leader at org.apache.zookeeper.KeeperException.create(KeeperException.java:126) org.apache.zookeeper.KeeperException$NodeExistsException: KeeperErrorCode = NodeExists for /overseer_elect/leader at org.apache.zookeeper.KeeperException.create(KeeperException.java:126) ~[zookeeper-3.5.5.jar:3.5.5] at org.apache.zookeeper.KeeperException.create(KeeperException.java:54) ~[zookeeper-3.5.5.jar:3.5.5] at org.apache.zookeeper.ZooKeeper.create(...

The Problem We needed to disable identity server in Sitecore 10.4 instance. We followed the instructions mentioned on Sitecore portal here When we activated the \App_Config\Include\Examples\Sitecore.Owin.Authentication.IdentityServer.Disabler.config.example, we got  this error:  Cannot find options for the 'SitecoreIdentityJwtBearer' authentication type. The Solution We found that we also need to set the  authentication type  as  empty  for  GraphQL , through below configuration, when you disable the  identity server  in Sitecore. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> <configuration xmlns:patch="http://www.sitecore.net/xmlconfig/" xmlns:role="http://www.sitecore.net/xmlconfig/role/"> <sitecore role:require="Standalone or ContentManagement"> <authoring> <graphql> <tokenValidator> <param desc="authenticationType"> <patch:delete/> ...