How to Get Started with SDL Tridion

How do I get started with Tridion development?

I've seen this question on Stack Overflow and Linked-In. If you'd like to develop with the SDL Tridion CMS, but don't have a license, see your options in order from the most-to-least costly:

• Buy it (maybe from someone in Sales)
• Work with the SDL Tridion product somehow (I hear the market's good):
• Work with/for a Tridion customer (if you already work at such a place, become friends with either your CMS guru or someone in IT Operations)
• Join an SDL WCM partner
• Join SDL CMT (as long as I don't know you from a past job, feel free to apply but make sure you write "Alvin Reyes" in the application form)*
• Get trained. With multiple courses and hands-on sessions, SDL's Web content management training courses are a great way to get familiar with SDL. It's also fun to break someone else's environment.
• Win an SDL Tridion MVP award (yes you can even nominate yourself), winners get a license for research and development

*If I do know you, you know me, or I'm not eligible for a corporate referral bonus when you read this, replace my name with another employee, using the popular work-related social networking site at the time (Linked-In as of November 2011).

Update Nov 6, 2012: Added training as an option to get started and removed "development." It helps to be technical, but not all Tridion work is technical.

Matching Software Licensing to SDLC

Update: Thanks, Jeremy for the clarification on terms. See updates below and a new graphic to demonstrate the high-level "modularity" built into SDL Tridion.

One of the things I always wanted to get a chance to do was learn more about the Tridion templates that use template building blocks (TBBs). Originally called Tridion compound component templates (until someone must have mispronounced it in a critical sales meeting), these modular templates... I first heard of compound templates when I helped a company purchase Tridion R5.3. This modular templating approach lets template designers mix and match different pieces of re-usable functionality. This brings the modular approach full circle.

• you can re-use whole sets of functionality (Tridion BluePrinting via parent and child publications)
• you can re-use schema pieces (embeddable schema in regular schema)
• you can re-use content pieces (components on a page), and now*
• you can re-use template pieces (template building blocks in compound component templates)

*Modular templating isn't the new hotness anymore in the year 2011.

In my opinion, the hardest part about using creating re-usable classes in this "third type" of template development isn't the technology. It's getting an organization's IT operations (IT Ops) group, their development team, implementation organization, and Sales on the same page, which is far from an easy task.

On Software Costs

A rough trend I've detected with software licenses is the inverse correlation between size of the software's feature set and the physical size of the license metric. Features and price rise as the size of the individually licensed unit go down. At some point though, you can usually get the unlimited option for just $X more (for more fun on software pricing read Joel Splonky's Camels and Rubber Duckies post).

Nivlong's Observation of the Inverse Relationship Between Physical Size of the Software Licensing Unit and Total Cost™

Alvin vs. October. Alvin wins!

 I didn't have a chance to really pause starting since the end of September. But deep breath, here goes...

I had the last meeting of the 20 five-week classes to complete my Bachelor's of Science in IT (emphasis Business Systems Analysis) on Wednesday, September 28, followed by my last day at a job I loved on that Friday, then I packed that weekend while in San Diego, then went to Europe (missing a connecting flight along the way) to spend an awesome weekend with some very cool/friendly/helpful/smart people in a Portuguese fortress to help start one of the most high-profile volunteer projects I've ever worked on, then flew back to San Diego and right over to San Jose to help check out a new place to live, went back to San Diego to walk in my graduation ceremony, and then took the drive back up to San Jose to start my first week at the new job without the new place ready just yet.

Quick breath and then...