Dipping a Toe into Open Source Development

I spent some time this weekend shaping my Gutter Icon code into a proper Github repo:

1. I took the class file and put it into a separate project.
2. I replaced the old namespace "SitecorePlayground" with the more official  sounding "SharedSource".
3. I serialized the Core content item that wires this up.
4. I created a package with the DLL and and the content item, and tested them in a blank solution.
5. I browsed among the various open source licences here and selected this one.
6. I put the whole thing on Github and added a Wiki.

Next step, getting it on trac.sitecore.net!  A fair bit of work for 20 lines of code, but quite satisfying.  Please comment if you end up using this in your Sitecore installation.  

My Sitecore Personal Trainer: Stack Overflow

There's nothing like getting your ego invested in your Stack Overflow rating (mine is a puny 173 at present), to get you working on your technical chops. I spent a few (too many) hours working on this question:

Defining Multiple Sites in Sitecore's Host File

Just discovered an odd little fact about how the sites/site node works in Web.config when defining multiple sites. There is an implicit wildcard functionality, so that if you have two host names, such as "Sitecore65" and "Sitecore65b", a site with hostname="sitecore65" will match both.   So if you want "Sitecore65B" to go to a different home item form Sitecore65, you have to put this entry first in Web.config:

       <site name="website2" hostname="sitecore65b" virtualFolder="/" physicalFolder="/" ...
       <site name="website" hostname="sitecore65" virtualFolder="/" physicalFolder="/" ...

Sitecore's multisite documentation mentions wildcard functionality, but from the way it is stated, I assumed this was explicitly specified with an asterisk:

Sitecore compares the hostName attribute (which may include wildcards) with the incoming URL

Oh well, you known what they say about assuming things...