Automatically Populating Page or Block Type Properties for a Language Branch in EPiServer 7

The creation and editing of content for multiple language sites in EPiServer 7 has recently become a topic of conversation in some of our projects. We occasionally receive feedback from our clients who are looking for ways to reduce the amount of time it takes to enter content, while also being consistent with the page and block layout.

One big change with the new Edit Mode in EPiServer 7, which was available in EPiServer 6 (and technically is still available in the old Edit Mode), is that feature to compare the language branches for a page side-by-side has been removed. This was useful for editors who need to keep the content for pages consistent between each language branch, as it allowed them to easily compare the different language branches.

So to help this, we created a property attribute called [AutoPopulateLanguageBranch]. Whenever a editor translates a page or block, this copies the values from the master language branch to the new language branch for the decorated page or block type properties. This keeps the content consistent between the language branches, which, at the same time, helps speed up the process of entering content.

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How to Add Valid Elements (like iframes) to TinyMCE in EPiServer 7

In a recent EPiServer 7 project, our client needed support for iframes and some other HTML tags in the TinyMCE WYSIWYG editor. Luckily, the way you add valid elements to TinyMCE hasn't changed much between EPiServer 6 and EPiServer 7, though some small issues have made the update a little more involved. In this post, I'll show you how to add valid elements to TinyMCE and how to fix the issues you'll potentially encounter along the way.

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Working with Localization and Language Branches in EPiServer 7 MVC

One powerful feature that EPiServer 7 provides is the localization of page content and the creation of language branches for your site, which allows you to create a multi-language, international site without the need for a huge amount of work. In this post, we'll look at how to configure, utilize, and develop for localization in EPiServer 7.

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Turn Your EPiServer 7 MVC Page/Block Model into a View Model using the Ignore Attribute

If you've ever built a large MVC application, you'll know that your project can sometimes contain a large amount of files, some of which act as a layer of code between two aspects of the application. One such file is the view model, which is used to transfer data from the controller to the view.

When developing with EPiServer 7 MVC, in most situations you can use the page or block model directly in your view. There are some cases, however, where you'll find yourself using a separate view model to satisfy the needs of the view.

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