This blog features 51 Sitecore Interview Questions, who are the most frequently asked questions by interviewers. These questions are bunched up after consulting with the top industry experts in the field of Sitecore Development. This blog is the only guide you need to master all the concepts required to clear a Sitecore interview.
Sitecore Training should be your first choice to clear up your basics and move towards clearing the Sitecore certification exam. A good training will help you learn everything about the field, and this blog will only be needed for a reference for 51 Sitecore Interview Questions.
Now, without any further ado, let us begin to unlock the list of frequently asked 51 Sitecore interview questions. But first, here is a brief into Sitecore and its future.
Sitecore is a globally renowned software company that is known for its offering of two products. One is a powerful CMS (content management system) and the other is a completely-adaptive DMS (digital marketing system).
The demand for Sitecore developers is experiencing a good all-time high and is expected to continue on its upward graph. However, there is a greater degree of demand than there is supply, and once you complete your Sitecore online training, you will easily understand 51 Sitecore Interview Questions with Answers
These 51 Sitecore interview questions have been designed to help you gain insights on the current interview scenario. Having knowledge of the top questions will help you feel more confident during your interview and even ace it with flying colors.
Q1. What is Sitecore?
Ans: Sitecore is a very flexible Content Management System (CMS). It is one of the leading enterprise-level content management systems (CMS) using which you can create an enterprise websites and intranet portal websites. Sitecore was found in 2001 and it is built on Microsoft .NET platform. Sitecore also allows deployment via Microsoft Azure.
Q2. Why should you use Sitecore?
Ans: Here are the top features of Sitecore CMS that separates it from other CMS:
Q3. Which is the latest version of Sitecore?
Ans: Latest Sitecore Version is 10.3 [February 15, 2023]
Q4. First look at Sitecore?
Ans: Sitecore user interface is very similar in look and feels to windows desktop, which makes it easy for new users to pick up and learn Sitecore. There are three ways you can log in to Sitecore - Desktop, Content Editor, and Page Editor.
Sitecore Login Screen:
Sitecore Desktop Screen:
Sitecore Content Editor Screen:
Sitecore Page Editor Screen:
Q5. What is Desktop?
Ans: When you are login using Sitecore Desktop you will find a rich set of features using which you can
Q6. What is a Content Editor?
Ans: The Content Editor is designed for more experienced content authors who feel comfortable working with a computer, Microsoft Word, and familiar with Sitecore functionality to add, edit or remove the content of the website using a rich set of features. Content Editor Interface has fewer feature options compared to the Desktop interface but has more feature options compared to Page Editor Interface..
Q7. What is the Page Editor?
Ans: Content authors are generally focused on the quality and accuracy of the material displayed on the Web site and not on the design, style, and layout of the site. For this reason, most content authors prefer to work in such an interface that is designed to meet their needs and not those of the developers and designers who create Websites.
With this in mind, Sitecore CMS allows content authors to edit and create items directly on the Web page with the Page Editor. The Page Editor is the simplest editing tool that Sitecore contains. It is designed for inexperienced content editors who edit and write content items directly on the page. It is a WYSIWYG editor (what you see is what you get) and limits the amount of functionality that is presented to the user.
When you log in to the Content Editor, the items that make up your Web site are presented to you in a very different way than they are in the Page Editor. In the Page Editor, you see the items as they are presented on the Web site.
Q8. How many databases are associated with Sitecore?
Ans: There are three databased associated with Sitecore:
Q9. What is the core database?
Ans: This core database has two purposes:
You May Also Read - What Is Sitecore? A Beginner's Guide To Learn Sitecore
Q10. What is the master database?
Ans: The master database is the authoring database - it contains all versions of content. Whenever a new piece of content is created, edited, or deleted it is stored here. This is the database that content authors interact with and is the default database used by the Sitecore Content Editor.
Q11. What is a web database?
Ans: The web database contains the live content of the website. When a content editor publishes some content then it is copied from the master database to the web database. It is a subset of the master database and optimized for size and speed.
12. What is the content author?
Ans: A website content writer or the content author is a person who specializes in providing relevant content for websites. Every website has a specific target audience and requires a different type and level of content. Content should contain words (keywords) that attract and retain users on a website. Content written specifically for a website should concentrate on a specific topic. It should further be easy to read, offering the information in easy to understand clusters or laid out in bullet points.
Q13: What is Item in Sitecore?
Ans: An item is a record in the database. Items are the basic building blocks of a Sitecore Site. An item may represent any kind of information, e.g. a piece of content, a media file, a layout, etc. Items always have a name and ID that uniquely identifies the item within the database. Items have a template that defines which fields the item contains. An item representing a single version of a piece of content is a single language. An item can be retrieved from a database using Items.
Q14. What is Template in Sitecore?
Ans: Sitecore uses data templates to define structures of items. Templates contain fields to represent individual elements. Each data template field has a type, such as Text, Image, Checkbox, and various other field types.
Q15. What is publishing?
Ans: By this time you are now aware of the fact that whenever you add, edit and delete any item in Sitecore, it will be stored in the master database. Now in order to move this change to a live website, you need to use publishing. Publishing is a process that will help you to copy updated items from the master database to a web database.
Q16. Which are the different types of publishing?
Q17. What is a Staging Environment?
Ans: As the best Sitecore practice, there should be separate Sitecore instances where all changes should be deployed before they are moved to the live site (production environment). This Sitecore instance is treated as a staging environment. A meaningful URL is given to the stage environment like http://stag.yoursite.com
Once the user is happy with the changes on staging environment, deployment is then roll-out to production environment.
Q18. What is the Production Environment?
Ans: Like staging Sitecore instance, there should be separate Sitecore instances for the production environment. The production environment is nothing but a live site that is getting used by the outside world. If this Sitecore instance gets down, that means your live website is down. Respective live URL of above stage URL http://stag.yoursite.com would be http://www.yoursite.com
You May Also Read - Sitecore Developer: Skills, Experience, And Salary
Q19. What is versioning in Sitecore?
Ans: In Sitecore content, authors have the ability to make a piece of content versionable. Each version of an item begins as a replica of the original or of another version and are all stored in Sitecore. Previous versions operate individually and can be published as the active version of a content item instead of the most recent version. At any time an active version can be rolled back to a previous version and vice versa.
Q20. Which are different types of view modes in Sitecore?
Q21. What are the standard values in Sitecore?
Ans: Standard values were first introduced in Sitecore 5.3 to overcome some of the issues experienced with the predecessors of standard values - 'Masters'. In Sitecore 6 masters were completely removed and the concept of standard values took over.
Standard values are a way of having default or fallback values for fields in Sitecore, meaning that when items are created, you can specify a field value that should be used by default. This does not only account for custom fields you build but also standard fields in Sitecore such as presentations and insert options. This means that you can specify a value on the standard values, and when you create a new item that inherits from this template, it will by default use the values specified on the standard values.
Q22. What is standard fields?
Ans: Sitecore provides few common fields for all items, these fields are called standard fields. These fields can help you to:
Q23. What is raw values?
Ans: Sitecore always stores field values as plain text in the appropriate Sitecore database (in the Value column of the Fields table). In Sitecore, there are two ways of getting data out of a field - the raw value or the rendered value.
A field's raw value is how the data is stored in the underlying database - for simple fields such as Single Line Text, there is no difference between the rendered and raw values; it's just plain text. This is not the case for more complex field types, such as General Link, Image, or Rich Text. Take the raw value of a General Link field, for instance - if you enable raw values in the Content Editor (by clicking the View tab and ticking Raw values) and look at an item with a General Link field, you will see that the value stored in the database is custom XML:
The following table provides an example of each field type, as the value is stored in the Sitecore database.
Q24. Which field contains item sort value?
Ans: The sort order field under the Appearance section contains item sort value. Decrease sort value to move up and increase sort value to move down items in the tree.
Q25. What is Layout in Sitecore?
Ans: Whenever a user sends any request to Sitecore through a URL, Sitecore resolves that item by generating a visual representation of that item. The layout provides the basic structure of this visual representation. The layout is a container that contains a different component of the page. Technically speaking, your.ASPX page is the layout and.ASCX, .CS or.XSLT file is a component (user control).
Q26. Which are the different types of rendering in Sitecore?
Ans: There are basically three types of rendering used by Sitecore developers.
Q27. What is the difference between the droplist and drop link field type?
Ans: By the time you reach to this question, you must be knowing that Sitecore always stores field values as plain text in the appropriate Sitecore database (in the Value column of the Fields table).
Sitecore has two different types of drop-down lookup fields that are available: Droplist and Drop link. Both of them function essentially the same way: they point to a Sitecore data item and list its children in a drop-down list for a content editor. This is a great tool because it allows you (as a data designer) to build a nice set of lookup values and not worry that editors will fat-finger these values.
But why are there the two, and what's the difference between them? Droplist data type only stores the string value of the item that was chosen by the content editor, while Droplink stores the GUID of the item that was chosen by the content editor.
So you may be wondering - so what?
This will cause a problem when you want to read the selected item's field value. If you use a drop list, you are not going to get the selected item and will get only the selected item's string value. But if you use a drop link, you can easily get the selected items and then can read any field value of that selected item.
Q28. What is the pipeline?
Ans: A lot of things happen when you request a page in Sitecore which is handled by pipelines. Pipelines define a sequence of processors that implement different functions such as handling page requests, uploading files, and saving items through the UI. If you have a series of tasks, which need to be performed to accomplish a task, then a pipeline may be the way to go.
Each processor in a pipeline contains a method named Process() that accepts a single argument and returns void. This method should return immediately if the processing context is not relevant to the processor. A processor can abort the pipeline, preventing Sitecore from invoking subsequent processors.
Sitecore separates the pipelines into two groups: those defined within the /configuration/Sitecore/pipelines and /configuration/Sitecore/processors elements in the web.config file. In general, those defined within the /configuration/Sitecore/processors define pipelines that operate for UI requests and can interact with the user. Those defined with the /configuration/Sitecore/pipelines tend to define system processes.
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Q29. What is the processor?
Ans: Each step in the pipeline is called a 'processor'. The sequence of processors within a pipeline is defined in the web.config file. Each Processor contains a unique operation and all these steps together create a pipeline. define system process such as initialize Sitecore application, load content editor warning. define UI process such as copy item, delete item, drag item, and so on.
Q30: Under which pipeline Sitecore context gets defined?
Ans:
Q31. How many processors are there under the pipeline?
Ans: By default, there are 19 processors under
Q32. What is the command?
Ans: When you click any button within the Sitecore interface, the respective command gets called. Typically Sitecore commands are used to map actions to c# code. This mapping is defined in /App_Config/Commands.config file.
If you want to add your own commands you can edit the /App_Config/Commands.config file or set up a patch file in /App_Config/Include.
The Core database contains the command definition.
Q33. Which are the steps to add a new command in Sitecore?
Ans:
Q34. Which options are provided by the Sitecore interface to move items from one instance to another instance?
Ans: Once you are ready with your Sitecore website, and you want to give it to QA people to test on their Sitecore instance () - how can you achieve this? In short, how to move your Sitecore items from the Development environment to the QA environment?
There are two options to achieve this requirement:
If you are not seeing the “Developer†option in the menu bar, then configure it as shown in below screen capture.
Q35. What is the difference between Package and Serialization?
Ans:
2. Sitecore Serialization:
So it's better to use 'Serialization' than 'Package' - lesson I learnt.
Note: Always use a firefox browser while installing items from 'package' or 'serialization' because Internet Explorer gets a time-out issue while installing a big package.
Q36. Which are the options to move items from the master database to the web database?
Ans: By the time you are reading this question, you may be knowing that in the real-world there are two Sitecore environments.
In order to move Sitecore items from staging environment (master database) to live environment (web database), there are two options available in Sitecore:
2. Transfer (rarely used in specific scenarios) - you should refrain from the transfer option if you want to move item(s) from a staging environment (master database) to a production environment (web database).
Q37. What is the difference between Publish and Transfer?
Ans: Whenever any item is published in Sitecore, there are a couple of tasks getting executed in the background. One of these tasks is clearing cache. That means whenever any item is published, Sitecore clears the cache of that item so that you will not find any caching issue on the live website.
On the opposite side, there is no cache clear job performed while using the transfer option. That means when you transfer any item(s), it will simply move item(s) from the master database to the web database. So it's your responsibility to clear the cache manually by using the cache clear tool.
Now let's talk about circumstances in which you can use the transfer option. If you have published tons of items which will take hours of time to get complete and suddenly you come across a situation where you want to publish a single/few items (s) instantly. You cannot publish this item until the publishing queue completes the current running publishing items (tons of items).
Even if you publish that urgently required item, it will be queued and will be published last. In such a situation, you can take advantage of the transfer option to move instantly required items from the stage environment (master database) to the live environment (web database).
This will push your item to the live environment instantly although you need to clear the cache manually by using the cache clear tool. If you don't know what a cache clear tool is, then don't worry we will discuss Sitecore cache and cache clear tool in upcoming questions.
Q40. What is the scheduler? How can you define the scheduler in Sitecore?
Ans: As the name implies, the scheduler is a task that gets executed at some interval. There are three ways to schedule a process in Sitecore CMS.
Configure agent in the web.config. This is very straightforward and the most common way to create a scheduler in Sitecore. Using this approach will restart the ASP.NET worker process, as it requires changing the web.config file.
Create schedule tasks in the Sitecore database In this option, you can define a scheduler in Sitecore database under /sitecore/system/Tasks/Schedules. This option is user-friendly as you can configure the scheduling options from the CMS directly. This approach would not restart ASP.NET worker process as you don't require to change the web.config file.
3) Create a Window Task Scheduler (window service) to call web service in Sitecore.
You May Also Read - How To Become A Sitecore CMS Developer?
Q41. What is the publishing target?
Ans: Where can you define publishing targets in Sitecore? In order to move items from the master database to the live (web) database, we use the publish option. If you have got a chance to observe the publishing window, you may have seen the publishing target section at the bottom of the window.
So, where are these checkbox values coming from? They are coming from publishing target configuration.
As per the above screens “Internet†publishing target is pointing to “web†databases. And the “web†database definition is configured in the web.config file.
You can configure more than one publishing target database as per your need. It is worth noting that the master database contains all versions items, while publishing the target database (e.g. web) contains only a single latest version of each language item. If you have multiple publishing targets, then you will see all of them in the publishing window as checkbox items. In case you want to set any of these publishing target databases as your default target database, then you can configure it via the DefaultPublishingTargets setting in the web.config file.
Q42. What is the workflow? How can you check the current workflow status of an item?
Ans: Sitecore is famous for its flexible architecture. You can achieve many requirements without doing any code and by doing some configuration only. One of its eye-catching features is its workflow.
Workflow is a controllable way by which you can define a series of tasks to add, review and publish content. In every CMS there are broadly three types of users:
In order to achieve the above series of tasks, you can take advantage of the Sitecore Workflow feature. You can find workflow at /sitecore/system/Workflows in the Sitecore content tree. The below figure shows an example of sample workflow.
Draft State: The draft state is the initial state and it will be assigned to the item whenever the user creates or edits the content. Sitecore items cannot be published if it is in draft state.
Awaiting Approval State: Once content editing is completed and the item is ready to review, the user can submit that item to the reviewer. This submission action will move the item from draft state to awaiting approval state. Sitecore items cannot be published if they are awaiting approval.
Approved State: This is the last state of the item. There are two types of actions can be executed under this state:
At any point of the item if you want to know the current state of the item, you can either check the workflow section fields of an item or by looking into the workbox.
Q43. Which are different tokens supported by Sitecore?
Ans: When you create an item, Sitecore replaces the token with the corresponding value of that item.
For example: if you have specified the $name token at "Title" field in standard value, then Sitecore will replace "Title" field with the item name that you provided while creating the item.
Here is the list of tokens supported by Sitecore:
Q44. How can you check if a particular item is referred to by which other items in Sitecore?
Ans: In your day to day Sitecore work you may come across a situation where you want to know how many items are referring to a particular item. For example, you are working on a template item and you want to know how many items are created using this template or how many items are using this template? Below screenshot will guide you on how to get referrers list.
If you want to check this for multiple items then it will be a time-consuming job to select every item and check links for all those items. For that, you can download the "Sitecore Informatics" module from Sitecore Marketplace which will show you all your site templates and items created using those templates.
Q45. How can you add help text for a particular field in Sitecore?
Ans: Many times you want to provide some help text to users to understand the purpose of a particular field. You want to convey a message to the user what should be the value of that field. This can be accomplished by configuring help text for that field. Below screen-shots will help you to configure help text for any field.
Q46. What is the display name? Why should one use it?
Ans: Whenever you create an item in Sitecore, you want to give a user-friendly name so that the content author can easily understand the purpose of that item. But do you know there are few restrictions in the item name, you cannot add special characters in the Sitecore item name.
For example - if you want to create an item "What we do?" Sitecore will not allow it as it contains a special character "?"
So how can you achieve it? The answer is - use the Display Name field. Once you create items by following item name criteria. You can then change the display field of that item by including characters which are not allowed while creating the item.
Display name (e.g. "Who we are?") will be shown in CMS user interface such as content tree in place of item name (e.g. "Who we are").
The advantages of using display name fields are:
Q47. Which characters are not supported by default for item name in Sitecore?
Ans: By default, Sitecore allows alphanumeric, $ and - character in item name. You cannot use any other special characters in item names. In case if you want to allow some special character in item name, then you need to change ItemNameValidation setting value in web.config file.
Q48: How can you configure the log folder path of your Sitecore site?
Ans: Sitecore uses log4net API to log all the events and information. By default, Sitecore creates date wise logs in the log folder.
You will find this logs folder under the data folder variable path. data folder is the variable that defines exact path of your logs folder.
Q49. Where does Sitecore store all packages? How can you configure this package folder path?
Ans: As we have seen earlier, Sitecore stores all the packages under dataFolder variable path. . dataFolder is the variable that defines the exact path of your logs folder.
Q50. Which are different types of caching in Sitecore?
Ans: Sitecore provides a number of caching layers. Each cache serves as a key/value collection. These caching layers are:
1. HTML Cache: It caches actual HTML output generated from rendering and sublayout. It can be configured from the caching section of rendering controls.
Each website can be configured to enable or disable HTML cache along with allowed HTML cache size in web.config file under
2. Item Cache: Sitecore items are cached under this cache layer. This cache contains objects of the Sitecore class Sitecore.Data.Items.Item, which are the one you use in your code most of the time. Whenever any sitecore item is requested, it will be served from item cache and if it is not there then it will be served from data cache (next layer of cache) and will populate cache in item cache layer. So that whenever the next request for the same item is made, it will be directly served from the item cache.
3. Data Cache: Data cache contains items of the Sitecore class ItemInformation. Whenever any request is made, data is pulled from the data cache. But if it is not present there it will be pulled from prefetch cache and then will be put into data cache. So that whenever the next request for the same item is made, it will be directly served from the data cache. Data cache can be configured in web.config file under Caching.DefaultDataCacheSize setting:
4. Prefetch Cache: There is a prefetch cache for each database. The cache contains items of Sitecore class PrefetchData which is the same as data pulled from the database. Prefetch cache loads the cache at Sitecore start-up as per specified in App_Config/Prefetch folder. The below diagram illustrates how all these are actually working.
Q51: Where can you add a new site in Sitecore?
Ans: Creating a new site in Sitecore instance (e.g. http://local.sitecore7.com) involves three steps process:
Step-1: Configure your site hostname in Sitecore Instance.
There are two ways to add a new site in your Sitecore instance.
1. Add
2. Add
You will find SiteDefintion.config.example file at \Website\App_Config\Include\ folder. You should remove the .example extension in order to use it.
Now you may be wondering which one is a good option. Well, let me help you with this. It is good to add a new site in SiteDefinition.config file because it's always advisable not to touch the default web.config file and override your custom settings in config files situated under the App_Config folder provided by Sitecore. After adding a new site in the config file, there are two more steps that need to be performed outside of Sitecore to access the newly added site.
Step2: Add your site hostname in IIS binding.
Step3: Add your site hostname in hosts file (under WINDOWS\System32\drivers\etc\ folder)
After completing these three steps your newly added Sitecore website is ready to access.
These are the top 51 Sitecore Interview Questions that should be enough to get you started. You can refer to our course section for the list of professional courses.
Question. What is the salary of a Sitecore CMS developer?
The average annual salary of a Sitecore CMS developer in the US is $103777. On the contrary, the average annual salary of a Sitecore CMS developer in India is Rs. 7,80,000. This salary is subject to change and differs as per the geographical location you work in, your company, experience level, skill set, and much more.
Question. How do I start learning Sitecore?
If you wish to start learning Sitecore, then the first step should be to enroll in a trusted Sitecore training online program. igmGuru is a great option for the same as you get assurance of quality training by industry experts of 10+ years experience.
Question. What type of CMS is Sitecore?
Sitecore XM Cloud is a widely popular enterprise-ready SaaS CMS. It reimages how content management is done by using a hybrid architecture for delivering developer agility.
Question. What language does Sitecore use?
Even though Sitecore is written in C#, you do not have to necessarily learn this language for building a solution. It is an ASP.NET-oriented product and hence, any language that is supported by ASP.NET is also fine.
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