Tridion

Publishing to a fake target

A very useful functionality where it is needed to have a central content and structure publication, but does not have a site behind it. I have seen a few instances where this was solved via an elaborate Event system (bad!) or even a fake site (bad!).

So, this is a good one to remember!

How Tridion component Linking works

A good to remember order of how Tridion deals with component linking. (hence the image of a knot in a finger). I didn’t really know this particular order either, so remember it!

1. Current Page
2. Current web folder or structure group (SG)
3. Child SG and pages
4. Parent SG and pages
5. Sibling SG and pages
6. Grandparent SG and pages
7. Sibling of my parent (aunt/tía/tante) SG

(Source: twitter.com)

The Stuff Schema are Made of

After Will Price his posts about Schema design Alvin Reyes continues on the schema design and adds his advice on how to deal with embedded schema, repeating fields, and the resulting design flexibility from using them together.

(Source: twitter.com)

Opportunity and Challenges for Third-Party SDL Tridion Tools

An interesting non-technical Tridion post by Alvin Reyes about the ways of making the most out of selling/sharing/creating your 3rd party SDL Tridion Tools. 

There are several business models which can be used, and actually most of them are not about straight money making. He has the following scenarios listed (via Wired Magazine):

- Freemium
- Advertising
- Cross-subsidies
- Zero marginal costs
- Labor Exchange
- Gift Economy

Tridion Workflow

It seems Chris Summer’s revelations about the new Workflow have started some nice discussions. A lot of people want to give workflow a proper chance and meaning in the workflow discussions and implementations.

Just to make my point I’d like to work with images. Looking at the main image of this post is what everyone hopes workflow will do to their content flow in the organization. Making every piece of content go into the appropriate lane and reach the destination without delay.

But, a workflow implementation can very easily cause the opposite (see image below). Content is waiting for actions by someone, which can easily become a big 

traffic jam of content. At this point solving the jam is more important than editing and reviewing each piece of content. This is usually the moment Workflow “temporarily” gets disabled or simplified.

Anyway, the future brings new hope! Now read some of the other blogs posted about Workflow:

Dominic Cronin:
- Will bundles be the saviour of Tridion workflow?

Alvin Reyes:
- Aint Got No (SDL Tridion) Workflow… Blues?

Chris Summers:
- Why we don’t use SDL Tridion Workflow

Robert Curlette:
- Workflow Dreamin’ 

Happy reading!

SDL Tridion Event System Newbie Perspective

Being a newbie in the great world of Tridion development can be daunting. One of the most common heard issues is that it is so hard to find help or information about Tridion on the “regular” internet (read: Google ;-) Luckily this is starting to change more and more these days now that Tridion developers are out in the open more than ever.

Alvin Reyes shows in this post how he, as a newbie impersonator (yes that was him with the mustache and big sunglasses), was able to find everything about getting the Tridion event system to work using Google searches.

(Source: twitter.com)

Tridion Community is starting to unite!

Alvin Reyes’ latest post on his personal blog is all about a summary of all the available resources and information about Tridion available via the internet.

What it comes down to is that there are several different things happening in the Tridion community to create less (but more ;-) sources of information on the internet and bring it out in the open. The combined weblog http://www.tridiondeveloper.com/ is one of these joined efforts where a bunch of Tridion people (including some of the MVP people) are combining their knowledge.  The other initiative is the Tridion StackExchange Proposal, which needs a lot of active bodies to get and keep it going!

Good stuff! I hope you all are following and participating in these initiatives!

(Source: twitter.com)