Albert te Boekhorst

Blueprinting is the name Tridion uses for creating a hierarchy of publications. Every publication in the hierarchy contains a specific website building block (XML schemas,content, templates, layout, applications). Each child publication inherits the building blocks of its parent(s). The publications lowest in the hierarchy are the publications where content, layout and applications come together and form a website. The building blocks inherited from a parent publication are read-only unless you “localize” (i.e create a local copy) them.

Choosing the right blueprint for your organization is critical to the success of a Tridion implementation. If you fail to get the blueprint right then future changes to it will prove to be very hard and the usability of the system very low. Even the initial implementation of a simple, one language and one channel, website will be a daunting undertaking and will remain a challenge during the entire product life cycle. Read the rest of this entry »

The goal of an alias is to create a link to some article on your web page that is short and descriptive enough for your audience to remember. Application could be for a TV commercial or printed media. In these cases you want to keep the URL short and simple.

For example the url http://website.domain.com/products/2008/1235469/default.aspx is impossible to remember. Therefore you want to be able to create a link like www.domain.com/alias. I have seen a number of interesting and very complicated solutions to this problem. However the easiest way to implement it is the following: Read the rest of this entry »