Understanding Development Approaches: A Sitecore Outlook Designing, building, and implementing top-notch experiences not only requires a great deal of planning, strategy, and time – it also requires the right digital experience platform (DXP) and the right development approach for your business needs. Get the Guide

A while back, I wrote an article demonstrating how to create a dropdown list for placeholders when adding a new component to presentation details in the content editor. It changes the input box to a dropdown so you don’t have to remember if your placeholder name was ‘three-left-col’ or ‘three-col-left’ or ‘three-left-column’. It was long and involved process that included decompiling the Sitecore binaries, creating custom classes, and updating the form logic for the page.

I’m pleased to announce that I have turned this functionality into my first Sitecore module! You can find it in the Sitecore Marketplace. Just download and install! Then register your placeholders in the content tree at ‘/sitecore/Layout/Placeholder Settings’ to see them appear in the dropdown list.



Version 2 will change the dropdown box into an autocomplete box allowing you to choose an existing placeholder or enter a new one

Version 3 will add the autocomplete box to the edit rendering dialog

Version 4 will scan your views to automatically register placeholder names with Sitecore

I’m already starting work on the next version and have plans for several more updates.

Follow me to make sure you are the first to know when there are updates to this new module! A huge shout out to Sitecore MVP Brandon Bruno for helping me bring this module to life!