Albert te Boekhorst

A component link is a reference within the content, or meta data of a component (A), to another component(B). The link in component A is a reference based on the unique ID from component B.

On the presentation server this reference will be translated to  the URL where the rendered content from component B can be found. If component B is not published you can choose two outcomes:

• The anchor text will be presented as normal text
• The anchor text is not shown.

Goal: To minimize effort in managing internal links. The advantage is that you will never have broken internal links on your website. Read the rest of this entry »

Tridion folders are used to store components and subfolders and are similar to directories (or folders on windows) on a file system. A folder can also contain metadata which can be used to describe the content of the folder. Permissions for different users or user groups can be set per folder.

It is good practice to use the folder structure for generating the main navigation for the website. Using the folder structure for the navigation gives content editors a solid view of the navigation as opposed to other options. The drawback is that generating the navigation structure from within Tridion is slow. However there are remedies to this (todo: write about advanced navigation structure rendering)

Tridion publications contain the building blocks used in Tridion blue printing. A Tridion Publication contains ONE of the following website parts:

• Nothing. Also known as the “Empty Master” has no parents and can never be given a parent. Placed to ensure that in the future the publications below it can be given new parents.
• Data design in the form of (XML) Schemas
• Frontend design and functionality. Component Templates, Page Templates, javascript, CSS etc.
• Components (content) for one language (English, Spanish) and one domain (website.com) or channel.
• A physical website. Usually only inherits from design and content and, optionally, a publication may contain Tridion pages. This type of Publication only combines content and design elements from parent publications. Usually it does not contain any local design parts or content.

It is possible to do all of the above in one publication. However this limits the possibility of re-use and with that the advantages Tridion offers in terms of maintenance.