SiblingID Explanation

I have an issue with content blocks on my site. When I edit some pages in my site content blocks are put in the wrong contentPlaceHolder. I submitted a support ticket on this item and they said that when a content block has an empty GUID for the SiblingID the content blocks are put in the first available ContentPlaceHolders.

Can someone explain to me the purpose of the SiblingID? Is it just to track order of content blocks? When I rearrange content blocks on a page are SiblingIDs recreated for these content blocks? Can I manually assign SiblingIDs if Sitefinity doesn't assign one when I publish? Sitefinity support couldn't offer any explanation for the behavior I was experiencing and their workaround didn't work so I really need some insight into the SiblingID.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks.

Jaime

Hello Jaime,

Simply said, this is resembles linked list data structure.

Example: You have a layout control with two placeholders. Within Sitefinity in each placeholders you can insert multiple widgets and their order is determined by their siblingIDs: the first control has ID=1 and siblingID=emptyGuid, second control has ID=2 and siblingID=1, third ID=3, siblingID=2 and so on. So if you need to insert another control on third place it will have ID = someNewID and siblingID=2. Of course you will also need to change the siblingID of ex-third control to siblingID=someNewID 

Here is how is defined in our official documentation: Add and remove controls

• SiblingId
  The preceding control Id. You must set this property for correct order of the controls in the page.