SDL Tridion – 2013

A couple of days ago, I attended the 2013 SDL Tridion Bootcamp conducted by Mihai Cadariu and Alvin Reyes. Some pretty exciting stuff, and it just so happens the new 2013 version is being released today!

SDL Tridion – Overview of the New User Interface 2012

Introduction

In early March, we heard a new SDL Tridion User Interface 2012 was arriving, and we received an invitation to one of the SDL Bootcamps where Mihai Cadariu, Principal Consultant at SDL Tridion, demonstrated the new interface along with the installation and configuration steps.

Although there is no official name for ‘the new interface’, existing SDL dev folks will be somewhat familiar with it as it was formerly known as SiteEdit. This new UI looks very promising with new cool features and also incorporates an architectural change. In addition, from a business user’s standpoint this probably is a much-needed fresh approach with respect to the authoring arena as content editors and authors need not use the traditional CME interface.

Using the Deployment module with Drupal 6 to easily stage content from one site to another

In this post, we will go over how to set up the Deployment module (http://drupal.org/project/deploy) on Drupal 6.

---

The Deployment module is meant to provide an easy way to stage and push content from one server to another. But, as the project page states, “There are a lot of moving parts and while it’s not “hard” to setup, there are several steps to go through.”

While setting up Deployment for one of our clients, we documented our process. Most of the information found in this post was informed by the documentation on the project page.

One Site Fits All: What is Responsive Design? – Part 2: The Drawbacks & Solutions

Responsive Design May Be Awesome, But It Isn’t a Web Design Panacea.

For an introduction to responsive design, see Part One in this series.

In our first article, we discussed the amazing flexibility that responsive design offers. But this flexibility comes with a price that might negatively affect your fastest-growing audiences – mobile and tablet users. While offering a flexible layout, responsive design requires the latest browsers, more code, and large images. In short, responsive layouts can be bandwidth hogs and resource-intensive to render. This affects users on the move, where bandwidth is the scarcest, and where processors lack the raw power of their desktop predecessors.

Google App Engine – Building a Microsite

Having the ability to quickly deploy a live microsite is becoming easier and easier.  Microsites can be great choices for supporting strategic launches, special events and limited Enterprise initiatives. Microsites allow easy inclusion into existing sites as a portal element or as a jump site. Since the lifecycle of a microsite tends to change frequently, developers need a way to ensure quick and perhaps timed deployments. In this blog post, I’ll cover how to quickly and concisely package and deploy the GAE (Google App Engine) application to create a microsite.

You Don’t Understand How Big Mobile Really Is

If you did, your company would put other web initiatives on hold and scramble to launch the best mobile experience for your industry.

With mobile smartphone use growing at such an astounding pace, I’m constantly amazed that there are still so many top-tier companies that do not have a dedicated mobile website experience. I believe that this rapid growth seems to be outpacing many  IT and marketing executives’ ability to digest and grasp how mobile is going to drastically affect their business growth – particularly in the consumer space.

With mobile, the year 2012 will be a unique parallel to 1996-97, when many industry titans were caught with their pants down by the speed at which web use grew, and were unable to launch a compelling website faster than their competitors.

Content Translation on a Drupal 7 Site

Recently, I had the pleasure of implementing the ability to translate content on a Drupal 7 site. Here is an outline of my recent experiences that will hopefully help any developer who is having trouble getting started with content translation in Drupal 7.

One Site Fits All: What is Responsive Design?

One of the most important factors in evaluating a website design is answering the question, “What is the average screen size my visitors will use to view my site?” Over the past few years, this evaluation process has become both more complex and more confusing due to the explosion of Internet-connected devices. Website access has shifted dramatically, and mobile/tablet browsing is expected to surpass desktop usage over the next two years.

Drupal 6 vs. Drupal 7

For now, the winner is clear.

We recently uncovered an excellent example of the immature state of Drupal 7 versus its well-established predecessor Drupal 6. We noticed early on in a recent project that the underlying data structure for content had changed in Drupal—there is now a component of the content-element data object that stores a Language ID for each value, which didn’t exist in D6 (granted, it’s always set to “undefined”, but it is there). This means that, in theory, individual content elements can have different language values, even in a single node (e.g. /node/123 can be displayed with English or French content).

SDL Tridion 2011 Partner Training

Recently, I attended the Tridion 2011 Partner Delta Training. In addition to GUI enhancements and integration with Smart Target, the content manager (CM) and content delivery (CD) have gone through some “under the hood” rework. Integrations with mobile engagement and the new, sleek online marketing explorer interface gives marketers and content strategists solid multi-channel plug-ins.