Disruptive Innovator

It's "easy" to explain basic Tridion concepts. The challenge is making it practical and relevant to an author's specific set of content.

Here's a "simple" content update process for the occasional author or even power user. Basically edit from your website publication, add new multimedia or components from the hyperlink pop-up, and publish the component when done.

Assumptions

• Page is already published and component exists on the page (this applies for the typical page-with-component-presentations setup)
• Most of your content is in a "main" content component.
• You manage components and pages (as a content "editor")
• Your rights and permissions give you access to the right folders
• Content and pages may exist in separate publications (typically "020 Content" and "040 Site" or similar).
• The update may include new (text) components or multimedia

Here we go...

1. In your "Site" publication (where you typically publish from), open your content component.* Select "Yes" if prompted to edit parent.
2. Make updates in your main "details" or "body" field.
3. If making a link to another component or multimedia, select some text, press the hyperlink button, and select type "component." Find your other component.
4. If you haven't created the linked-to item select the "create" tab from your folder and create one or more of the following:
• new component
• new multimedia component, or
• upload multimedia (if you want a new "Default Multimedia" component with the same name).
5. Your new component will be selected. Click insert. Click OK. Save & Close your component from step #1.
6. You're back at the Tridion main screen (Content Manager Explorer or "CME") with your updated component selected. Refresh. Click publish. You may need to publish multimedia as well if instructed by your team.

Happy Editing!

The Dreamweaver Region Selection Parameter Schema allows SDL Tridion template designers the ability to put the component visualization and page layout in a single Template Building Block (TBB).

The following isn't your typical* setup and follows a variation on the SDL Live Content topic titled "Designing Component visualization separately." (Valid login required, see topic under  > Implementing Content Manager > Templating > Creating an Adobe Dreamweaver Template > Designing Components > Designing Component visualization separately)

Update: *After surveying a few Tridion consultants, I doubt anyone actually does this. Feel free to see if this has applicability in your projects but in case anyone asks about that documentation, feel free to point them here for an example.

Create a Page DWT

Design the html markup for your page or see the video.

Add Page Information

Use ${Page.Title} or ${Page.Name} in place of the page's main heading (typically within the first <h1>). In practice you may need more than this basic field. Read a brief walkthrough on making assemblies or learn more on the template package from a post by "String Writer."

Create a new Template Building Block (TBB), optionally by uploading it. Add the "Dreamweaver Region Selection Parameter Schema." Replace the <h1> header text with ${Page.Title} in the Source tab.

In the Template Builder, add the new TBB layout to a Compound Page Template along with the Default Finish Actions to show the heading pulled from a page.

"Home Page" in this example comes from the selected page. It literally takes moments to start pulling data (content) from SDL Tridion.

If you also add a typical repeat region named "Components" the DWT will render both page layout and selected component presentation. In this example, the "tcm:7-65" is added by the specific template chosen for this component presentation on this page.

Add Component Visualization

TridionWorld, the online community site announced the 2012 SDL Tridion MVPs. I wanted congratulate the new winners and write a little about past/current/would be MVPs.

Congrats to:

• Albert Romkes
• Chris Summers
• Dominic Cronin
• John Winter
• Kah Tang
• Nickoli Roussakov
• Ram Gonuguntla
• Ryan Durkin
• Vinod Bhagat

Regardless of expertise, title, or status, the SDL Tridion community needs you.

What's in a Title?

The SDL Tridion MVP program recognizes people that have shared online about the product.

Employees of SDL, the company that sells SDL Tridion are eligible to earn a similar award, but with the title, "Community Builder."  This phrase is so catchy that the company released a software package previously known as User Generated Content (UGC) as "SDL Tridion Community Builder" with the SDL Tridion 2011 Service Pack 1 (SP1).

Non-Active MVP Status

The MVP program (including CBs) recognizes contributions over the course of the year. It's somewhat related to expertise, but isn't solely based on knowledge. The emphasis is on the sharing of that knowledge.

If you've been nominated, selected for, and accepted an award, you get the title along with an active year. After winning, you're asked to continue sharing to keep the title for subsequent years. There is the possibility of not earning the title for a given year.

However, unlike the Mission Impossible Force, not having the title in a year does not mean disavowed status. If you've been active in the past, it's likely you're still on Tridion projects, developing with the software, or are in contact with the community. The instant messages from MVPs goes on, the TridionWorld forum continues, and you're free to work on whatever Tridion-related projects that interest you (hint: PowerTools!).

I was incredulous when I heard you could simply paste a Web page into a Tridion WebDAV folder to create a template building block (TBB) for layouts. Don't let the 60 second video fool you into thinking this all there is to template development in Tridion, but in this case getting started is simple and the setup, relatively trivial.

The hardest part for template development may likely be determining requirements, from determining how to deliver content in technical terms (.NET, Java, or plain HTML with or without a framework) to which parts of the site authors expect to be editable.

1 Minute Demo