Serge van den Oever's weblog

Personal blog by Serge van den Oever - als je maar lol hebt...
X: @svdoever
LinkedIn: Serge van den Oever - articles on LinkedIn
GitHub: svdoever

Technology Consultant @ Macaw
2021-2024 Sitecore Technology MVP

Setup for LLM experimentation with OpenAI API and local models

In this post I will describe how I use Docker Compose to set up an LLM experimentation environment where I can connect tools and chat to cloud-based OpenAI API compatible and local LLM models, and monitor exactly the executed prompts, its completions, the number of tokens used and the costs.

AI App Generation - organize my thoughts

I’m building a PDF-to-Markdown web app, exploring AI tools like GitHub Copilot, bolt.new/bolt.diy, v0.dev, and Clide, but prefer Visual Studio Code for its flexibility, control, and integration with familiar workflows. I want AI to help me, but without replacing hands-on coding and the ability to debug, refactor, and test comprehensively.

XM Cloud Style Library - Part 2 - What about the styles?

In this post we do a deepdive on what exactly happens under the hood of XM Cloud Components Style library, and investigate what more we could do the ourtcome of the Style Library.

XM Cloud Style Library - Part 1 - What is it?

A short introduction to the capabilities of the Sitecore XM Cloud Components Style Library, as a step up in further deepdiving on what more we can do with it.

XM Cloud - from scratch - Part 3 - Starting with development

In the XM Cloud from scratch we created a project, environment, and site. Now it is time to get ready for development. Get Node.js installed, set some environment variables and you are all set. In this post I walk you through these steps.

XM Cloud - from scratch - Part 2 - Understanding XM Cloud's Automated Deployment

In the XM Cloud from scratch - Part 1 - post, we created a project, environment, and site. But what exactly happens on deployment? And how about the rendering host?

XM Cloud - from scratch - Part 1 - project, environment, and site creation

XM Cloud from scratch - a walk-through of the Sitecore intended way of creating a Sitecore XM Cloud with its first environment, and its first site. This will be a stepping stone to dive deeper in XM Cloud, and what it is all about.

Sitecore Demo Portal - 10.3+ SXA headless development

In this post, I will take you through the steps to use Sitecore XM version 10.3 running as an instance on the Sitecore Demo Portal, as a headless CMS. I will show the required configurations to build a front-end application that uses the content of the Sitecore XM instance and works with the Experience Editor.

XM Cloud and changing the web.config to disable custom errors

I had quite a few occasions while working with XM Cloud that I got the generic ASP.NET RunTime Error screen, instead of a detailed error description. In this post I explain how to apply modifications to the web.config file of your XM Cloud environment using an XML Document Transform (XDT) file to enable detailed error information.

Sitecore Demo Portal - cm and the web.config

Use the cm folder to sync files to your Sitecore Demo Portal CM environment and to patch your web.config. But did you know you can check if your patches worked, or files are synced correctly?

XM Cloud Pages - feature flags

Always fun to dive into the network traffic of a web application. In this case the XM Cloud Pages editor. And what do we see? Feature flags!!

XM Cloud Pages - what do translation files tell us

While diving into the network traffic of the XM Cloud Pages editor, I stumbled onto the English translation file for Pages. Good to see all texts in one overview, it tells something about the features of the product...

AI Adventures - how I started

Finally a write-up of my first steps into AI, an interesting ride, that just got started...

XM Cloud Components Access

How do you get access to XM Cloud Components? The short answer is: if you have access to XM Cloud, you should have it...

XM Cloud changelog: Sitecore Components

Sitecore maintains a changelog for XM Cloud - a big improvement over the past when we did not really know what changed over new XM Cloud / SaaS deployments. This change is about Sitecore Components, with some cool new features...

XM Cloud Components - what is it?

There is a new addition to XM Cloud named Components. My series of blog posts on XM Cloud Components starts with this completely AI generated introductory post.

Bookmark a LinkedIn article, and find it back

Want to save articles on LinkedIn, and even find them back? Sound like an easy functionality, but it isn't...

Creating a Hybrid TypeScript CLI and Library Function with tsx

I write loads of small CLI scripts, but often I want to use the core functionality of the script in other scripts as well. This is an introductory post on how you can achieve this.

XM Cloud - stay in sync with the headstart

A new XM Cloud project is scaffolded from a headstart provided by Sitecore. But how do you stay in sync with that headstart in case Sitecore decides to fix issues or include innovations? In this post, I will describe how we do this in general when starting from a headstart.

XM Cloud and XM 10.3 webhooks

A new and powerful extensibility model now available for XM Cloud and XM 10.3 are webhooks. In this post I will explain what webhooks are, how to use them, and how to optimize your development workflow.

XM Cloud Deploy API

XM Cloud Deploy has the Sitecore CLI and a web UI for deployment, but both are based on a well-documented API!

XM Cloud, the Sitecore CLI version, and upgrade

I would like to work with the latest version of the Sitecore CLI and its plugins, but upgrading to it is not that easy... In this blog post, you will learn how to find the version of the Sitecore CLI and its plugins, and how to upgrade them.

XM Cloud build and deploy like a pro

XM Cloud Deploy has a web UI with some great features to start a build and deploy, monitor the progress, and inspect the log files. But it also has some drawbacks. In this blog post, I will describe these drawbacks and show how to improve the workflow.

XM Cloud - use PowerShell ISE to test configuration changes

Sitecore XM and its cloud sister XM Cloud can be completely tailored through configuration files. But especially on XM Cloud testing out configuration changes is a lengthy process (10+ minutes) because a build and deploy is required to see the changes. In this blog post I will describe how I test configuration changes in just seconds.

XM Cloud, PowerShell, and remoting

XM Cloud is a cloud environment we would like to automate against using PowerShell. In this blog post, I explain how to enable the PowerShell ISE and configure your XM Cloud environment for PowerShell remoting.

XM Cloud rendering host options and fast local development with Experience Editor & Pages

XM Cloud comes with an out-of-the-box internal editing host. Deployment to this host is currently slow (Sitecore is working on decoupling Editing Host builds/deployments from CM builds/deployments so that Editing Host builds/deployments are fast). Lets use a locally running editing host, and expose it to the outside world using a reverse-proxy so the Experience Editor and Pages can work with the rendering host on your dev box.

XM Cloud - getting the Project ID

When working with the Sitecore CLI against XM Cloud, the Project Id is needed as a parameter. There are multiple ways to retrieve this Project Id.

XM Cloud Play! Summit demo

The XM Cloud Play! Summit demo is similar to the Play! Summit demo as available in de Sitecore demo portal, but tailered for XM Cloud. And in just a few command you can get it running on your local machine...

XM Cloud documentation

XM Cloud documentation is getting there!

Running the XM Cloud SXA Starter on your local machine

The Sitecore JavaScript Rendering SDK comes with a new headless SXA starter that is only useable for XM Cloud, no access to XM Cloud? No problem! Lets run it locally...

The XM Cloud container - don't fiddle (too much) with it...

A failed experiment to make a local XM Cloud development environment known to the outside world.

Local XM Cloud development

Although XM Cloud runs in the cloud, development can be done locally using Docker containers. This way we can see what we can do with XM Cloud without having access to the real stuff (yet).

Sitecore demo portal series - Part 2 - The Sitecore CLI

In this second part of the Sitecore demo portal series I investigate if the Sitecore CLI, as used during the configuration of Sitecore XM 10.2 by the Sitecore demo portal provisioning scripts, also works for the developer.

Sitecore demo portal series - Part 1 - create an empty environment from scratch with the demo portal

In this first part of theSitecore demo portal series I will spin up an empty environment using the Sitecore demo portal. I will guide you through all required steps, so everything is prepared to take the next steps of creating a Sitecore headless site, a "head" website using Next.js, and utilizing Experience Edge for content delivery.

XM Cloud series - Part 1 - create an empty environment from scratch with the demo portal

After mistakenly thinking that the Sitecore demo portal was using XM Cloud, I rewrote this blog post to explain I made a mistake.

Rewatching (Sitecore) videos on BOX a lot? Use keyboard shortcuts

A short post that will save you a lot of time if you need to watch a lot of box.com videos: keyboard shortcuts!

Sitecore SXA cheat sheet

A cheat sheet for Sitecore SXA without C# coding.

Prevent useless npm error output in your project

When you run an npm script that has not exit code 0, an annoying set of useless error lines is shown. But there are some options to get rid of them!

VSCode tasks and parsing your custom output for problems

For custom tools reporting problems like errors and warnings it is nice if they end up in the "Problems" panel in Visual Studio Code. In this post I describe how to achieve this.

Chalk, TypeScript and Lerna

Get chalk working with TypeScript, get color output with chalk in Lerna.

Next.js on Azure with Sitecore JSS

Running Sitecore JSS headless frontend with Next.js on Azure with all its CSR, SSR, SSG, and ISG goodness could look like this...

Next.js on Azure, and an example on how to use it for Sitecore JSS

Running Next.js on Azure with all its CSR, SSR, SSG, and ISG goodness. And as an example run also Sitecore JSS on it!

Run Gulp 4 tasks programmatically from NodeJS

Want to use the power of Gulp within your NodeJS application, instead of using the Gulp CLI and a gulpfile.js file? I finally found out how...

Processing multipart/form-data in NodeJS Azure function with HttpTrigger

Processing multipart/form-data containing both fields, files and images is not as easy as it seems to be in a NodeJS Azure function with HttpTrigger. But it can be done, and I will show you how!

Netlify functions - continue after completion

Netlify functions are a powerful beast for all your API needs. But what if I want to return as soon as possible from my API call to keep my web UI responsive, but still need to do something like sending out an e-mail? Enter the "classic" function style that makes this possible.

Web components the silver bullet for Sitecore SXA?

Sitecore SXA is a great way forward in structuring the way of building Sitecore web sites, providing a set of standard renderings and provide an editing experience for the web site maintainers. But sooner than later you want to extend/replace the out-of-the-box set of renderings, calling in the front-end developers to do their magic. At that moment there are many ways they can do their work, and in this post, I will describe in what is in my opinion the optimal way for performance, SEO, front-end developer experience, and separation of concerns.

Creating Sitecore SXA 9.3+ renderings without C#

Creating custom renderings can be done completely without adding C# code. In this post, we explore how to create a new SXA Toolbox section and a new rendering through the Sitecore web interface.

How the Sitecore SXA team writes SXA components

When you look at the out-of-the-box Sitecore SXA components you can see that the Sitecore SXA team writes most SXA components using jQuery and a small utility API called XA (eXperience Accelerator). In this post, I will dissect how Sitecore writes components and I will show you how to write a simple clock component in TypeScript using the XA API.

Installing the Sitecore 9.3 SXA.Styleguide project

Mark van Aalst provides a great "no C# code" SXA sample project with the SXA.Styleguide project available on Github. In this post I describe how to get this project up and running on your local Sitecore 9.3 installation.

From SXACLI to enhancements to SXA Umbrella

After investing a lot of time and effort in working with Sitecore SXACLI and creating enhancements on the standard SXACLI tooling I decided that it was time for a different approach. Please meet SXA Umbrella!

Sitecore 9.3 - uninstall site installed with Sitecore Install Assistant

If you are still one of those losers like me that install their Sitecore 9.3 on their local machine with the Sitecore Install Assistant (SIA) instead of in a fancy set of docker containers using Docker Compose, and if you are an even bigger loser (like me) that you mess up your Sitecore installation or even worse forgot your Sitecore admin password, welcome to this life-saver post to uninstall your installation in seconds!

Run npm NodeJS scripts with Fiddler

When you have an npm script that does use a NodeJS library (through gulp for example) that does web request that you want to monitor with Fiddler, checkout this simple script!

Fixing "sgen.exe" filename or extension is too long

When you get this annoying "sgen.exe" error, you can use this fix!

Sitecore SXA theme investigation

To understand the way Sitecore Experience Accelerator (SXA) works, how components are built and theming is done you need to do some deep-diving. In this blog post I describe the best way to do this deep dive using the creative exchange.

Sitecore 9.3 SXA CLI - get item fields

In my Sitecore 9.3 SXA CLI endeavors I find myself searching for the internal field names of Sitecore items so I can use them in my Scriban templates. Using this remote PowerShell script you can look up the item fields of any Sitecore item.

Republishing blogposts on dev.to

I write blogposts on my own blogging platform, because I want to be the owner of my own content. I'm also a fan of https://dev.to as a great developer community blogging platform. Fortunately https://dev.to allows and supports cross posting...

PowerApps Portals - the GraphQL story

PowerApps Portals is positioned as a low-code platform. Built on top of the Dynamics and the underlying Common Data Services (CDS) it enables the "citizen" developer to create public facing websites with support for logged-in users. Underlying the WYSIWYG editing GraphQL is used to do updates on the content and configuration of the portal.

Sitecore 9.3 - create a custom theme for SXA using SXA CLI

Manage your SXA 9.3 theme under source control instead of as artifacts under the `Media Library/Themes` folder using the SXA CLI - make your front-end developers happy!

Simplifying hosting my weblog - bye bye Azure

I really tried hard. But Azure - you failed me!

Serving static files from GitHub

When you need to request files from GitHub with the correct mime-types GitHub itself is not the best place.

Umbrella for Sitecore JSS

Umbrella for Sitecore JSS is our vision on how a website should be developed and hosted while using the JSS SDK and Sitecore as a headless CMS.

Render Sitecore 9.1 JSS site using separate node server

Use a custom Node based server to render Sitecore 9.1 JSS pages.

Developing React components in Typescript with Sitecore JSS 9.1

At my company we use TypeScript for front-end development where possible. In my first steps in using JSS I wanted to build my first component in TypeScript, which did not work out of the box. In this post I describe how I got ypeScript compilation working.

Weblog deployment to a static Microsoft Azure website

This weblog is created with GatsbyJS and after build results in a static website that can be hosted anywhere. I host my weblog on a Microsoft Azure static website. In this post I provide links to how to set up an Azure static website, and how to automate the deployment based on commits to the Github repository.

Serge's first blog post!?

That mandatory first blog post on my own "blogging platform". After blogging for years on http://weblogs.asp.net/soever and some endeavors with the Medium blogging platform.

Git - getting list of changed files into zip file

Given an old Git repo, pull out changed files into a zip file.