Archive for March 2010
Content Distribution/Publishing in Tridion 2009
Content Distribution (or Publishing) is a process of taking content out of Content Manager and presenting it to Presentation Server(1). As described in the above diagram, there are some processes involved in content distributions.
In Tridion, an item can be published either through manual process (user) or automated process (workflow). If any item gets published, Publisher sends that item to transport service. Then transport service assembles the published item with its associated items (component presentation and pages), into a transportation package. Transportation package is nothing but a zip file containing xml files. Sender in Transportation Service sends the package to one or many destinations, using specific protocols(2). Receiver in the Deployer side, receives the package using the same protocols as Sender. Deployer unpacks the transportation package and process all the items according to the transportation instructions included with the package. It either transmits to Broker or any other custom actions (In my project, packages will be sent to file system). Broker will process an item and will be stored in a DataStore(3), as configured.
(1) Presentation Server – It could be of any .Net/JAVA web and application server (such as IIS or Tomcat).
(2) Protocols – It could be any of, File System, HTTP, HTTPS, FTP or custom protocol.
(3) DataStore – It could be of either File System (or) Database (DB2, SQL Server or Oracle).
Tridion: Building Blocks
- defines the content and metadata structure of components
- Managed in Folders
- Following fields can be defined in a schema
o Text – allows alpha-numeric values
o Date – allows dates and times
o Link – allows links to other objects
o Multimedia – allows binary files
o Metadata – content attributes
- Five types of schemas available
o Component Schema – defines text type and its metadata fields
o Embeddable Schema – repeatable fields can be defined as embeddable schema. This can be used in other schemas wherever it requires.
o Multimedia Schema – defines type of binary files and its metadata fields
o Metadata Schema – defines the metadata for the following
§ Publications
§ Folders
§ Structure Groups
§ Component Templates
§ Page Templates
§ Pages
o Parameters Schema – defines parameters for a compound template.
- Stores text or multimedia content based on schema
- Managed in Folders
- Schema is mandatory while creating a component to provide data for schema fields.
- Two types of components
o Text – stores text and links
o Multimedia – stores any type of files
- Managed in Folders
- Defines the layout for components
- Mandatory while adding a component to a page
- Specifies which component fields can be displayed
- Managed in Structure groups
- Combines page templates with one or more component presentations
- Contains component presentations to combine content and layout
- Page template is mandatory for creating a page
- Managed in Folders
- Defines the layout/content area for a page
- Helps to maintain consistent look and feel across website
- Defines file extension for a page (ex: html, aspx, jsp)
Available for all building blocks
- Permissions can be assigned to all tridion objects separately
- Where Used can be accessed from any objects which will display the relationship details if they are used in other places.
Tridion: Organizational Items
- Collection of content and layout items that are used to create a website
- Contains folders, structure groups and categories
- Root publication should be defined to overall publications
- While creation, child publication will be exact copy of parent but virtual copy
- Usual Practice
o Empty publication should be created as root to accommodate future changes.
- Stores content building blocks (schemas, components, comp templates, page templates, folders and virtual folders)
- Contains physical copy of building blocks
- Default folders are Content, Default Building Blocks and System
- Usual practice
o Components are stored in Content folder
o Schemas and Templates are stored in System folder
- Organize, manage, and provide a URL structure for Pages
- Contains Pages with embedded building blocks
- Can be used for site navigation
- Can be displayed in order by prefixing 3 digit number, <nnn>_<Title>
- Title without prefix number will not be shown on page.
- Usual Practice
o Prefix numbers are incremental of 10
- Classify the contents using keywords
- Keywords are unique across categories in a publication
- Keywords can be used as source for collection controls (ex, dropdown)
- Two other types of keywords
o Abstract – defines generic characteristic of an object. It can’t be used for classification.
o Concrete – defines specific values
- Only possible through TOM API
o Category can have another category as parent
o Keywords can have multiple parents
o SDL Tridion GUI will only show a single parent
- Usual Practice
o Parent keyword name will be appended while trying to add duplicate keyword names (ex, <parentKey>_<keyword>
CMS-3 : Web Content Management Systems
Content Management Systems - allows more people to contribute contents and manages web site without having to deal with the technical aspects of web design.
Generally CMS is classified as ECMS & WCMS.
- Enterprise content management systems - manage the content/documents related to the organization.
- Web content management systems - manage and publish the content to website or mobile devices.
I’ve not worked much on enterprise content management systems. So I’m listing the details of only WCMS.
Web Content Management System
- Presentation layer displays the content based on templates.
- Provides browser-based interfaces
- Even non-technical users can manage contents
Capabilities
- Automated templates
- Easily editable content
- Workflow management
- Content Targeting
- Document management
- Content syndication
- Multilingual
- Scalable feature sets
Advantages
- Database driven
- Separate design and content.
- Use CSS to control site
appearance - Access from anywhere
- Web site management panel
- Schedule content updates
- HTML knowledge not required
- Create automatic RSS Feeds.
Disadvantages
- Storage Volume
- Limited flexibility in design
- Limited SEO of web pages
- Performance Issues
- Maintenance costs
All these details are taken from various web links.
CMS-2 : Web Content Lifecycle
My colleage adviced me to get better understanding about the content lifecycle if we want to become CMS professional. To be honest, I’ve been searching some materials about all phases but finally I end up with not much clarity. So many people are suggesting variuos phases.
Finally I understand all are pointing similar things but categoried into granular levels. As I’m working in Tridion project, I could compare each phases with their definitions and I agreed with following 7 phases.
Content lifecycle
- Organization
- Creation
- Storage
- Workflow
- Versioning
- Publishing
- Archives
I didn’t detail each phase as I don’t know to elaborate these things 
. Please refer CMS Seven Stages to know more details.
Here are other references for better understanding…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_content_lifecycle
http://johnnyholland.org/2010/10/14/content-lifecycle-closing-the-loop-in-content-strategy/
http://intentionaldesign.ca/2010/04/15/content-lifecycle/
CMS–1 : Content Management Overview
Content Management
Process of managing the contents through its lifecycle -from creation, review, storage and publish to expiration. Here the content could be of plain text or any file types (such as doc, jpg etc.) which needs to be managed.
Mostly, the content will exist as an independent component from the presentation.
Why Content Management
Before we step into further, we need to understand why we need content management. There are many but I’m taking only the very basic reason for the need of Content Management.
In traditional applications, developers will create user interfaces and business users will provide the contents. But the problem is that Business users can not add or edit their contents directly as they are integrated with user interface. This will require them to have technical knowledge to edit their contents. Hence the contents will be provided to developers and they will put it on the pages for publishing.
There is a complete dependency over content publishing. Due to this process, there will also be a delay in content updates on the websites.
In CM, since the contents are not integrated with user interface, Business users can directly add the contents without having much technical skills. Also they can publish their contents directly for approval. So the dependency can be avoided and content updates also can be faster.
The advantage of content management is each action its lifecycle can be performed by one or more users, which are independent from each other.
Content Management is useful,
1) If you are changing the website content frequently
2) If you need a workflow process for approvals
3) If you need to schedule a content to publish/archive/expire
4) If you need to get your older version of contents.
Basic Roles
The below are the basic roles of CM process. These can be classified to further according to business requirements like US Content Creator, UK Content Creator.
|
Roles |
Responsibilities |
|
Creator |
Creates and Edits the content |
|
Editor |
Manages the contents like formatting, adding hyperlinks. |
|
Reviewer |
Reviews the contents |
|
User |
Reads the contents after they are published. |
|
Administrator |
Administrates all contents like managing access controls to files and folders. |
