Restricting the number of times a rendering can be added to a placeholder

This is another one of those tasks that shouldn't really be necessary to do. Every time a client says "We don't want two of these components added to this placeholder" my answer is always "So don't add two." It's a people problem that companies want solved with technology. This solution is geared more toward the use of the Experience Editor and it is going to stop a rendering appearing in the "Select a rendering" dialog if it already exists in that placeholder the maximum number of times.

Giving content editors control over styles

Introduction

When building a Sitecore solution one of the largest mindset decisions is who the client of your solution is going to be.  Is your site going to be managed by developers?  Or is it going to be managed by the business?  One of the advantages of a CMS is that it gives the business the ability to manage the site themselves, ie your marketing people, your product people and so on, who can run the site without needing help from a developer.  This concept of an end product that can be managed without developer input is of benefit to everyone; the business can instantly do the things they want to do, and developers only need to spend their time developing and not changing META data or page titles.  However many of the Sitecore solutions I get asked to consult on can only realistically be maintained by developers.

There are a few common practices that make for a "developer only" Sitecore solution, but the one I am going to discuss in this blog revolves around configuring styles.  This article assumes you already understand the basics of creating renderings, it's not going to be a complete tutorial on creating Sitecore components.