We Didn't Start the Fire

Once in a while you get an opportunity to be a part of a subtle shift in people, process, or technology that has major repercussions.

Small spark. Big change. Read more on the next (r)evolution in the Tridion Technical Community (aside from the upcoming Tridion PowerTools release of course).

Wait, you thought your participation in the Stack Exchange proposal was over? Dave Houlker proposed the site, we committed, but there's more to do.

If you're not ready, (re)visit the 5 stages of Tridion grief, courtesy of Nuno (this week's he's Knew Know thanks to MVP chat).

I may not be part of the impressive old (skool) guard and earlier Tridionauts, but I feel like family. And just as I was getting comfortable with the "new" R5.3, after three years everything changes...

SDL Tridion 2011 added GUI extensions, the Core Service, a cross-browser, ribbon-based UI, and a revised event system. Then SDL Tridion 2011 SP1 added improved Translation Manager integration and rebranded UGC into Community Builder which now comes with the install. We also have new family and new tech with Smart Target and Media Manager. There's a public Tridion knowledge base, dozens of Tridion-related blogs, and ELearning. Yup, Tridion Training via ELearning, led by one of those resources I mentioned. Don't forget the SDL Live Content comment-able documentation. We have community cookbooks, dynamic delivery frameworks, and a selection of extensions. There's a mobile delivery partner, an alliance with EMC, and the integration software as proof. There's an awesome release that changes SiteEdit so much, it's been re-namespaced as simply "the UI."*

You can google Tridion answers. And a good deal of this, give or take the few things that have been brewing longer, happened within the last two years.

Feeling nostalgic for WCM's roots or excited about the future? Read an excellent article by Tridion-founder Arjan van Rooijen taking about the past and future of the industry. Though I might be able to fathom the next two decades in WCM, my more immediate thoughts are on what the next two years will bring.

And if if all of the above was old news for you, no worries, it will all change... again. In a good way, of course. Can we keep up as a community? Will we blaze the trail?

Committment to the Tridion StackExchange proposal  means asking, answering, or even just editing (gardening) questions and answers. Help get us to the next phase and we'll see if we're actually catching fire.

Now we're cooking!

Small steps. Big change.

Flames courtesy of Stock Exchange.
*I use "we" loosely--I've heard, seen, and know of lots of these points and news, but didn't make the magic happen. Credit for that goes to you, fellow consultants, implementors, customers, and SDL WCMS leadership.

SDL Tridion: I Wish I Knew Then...

If you're reading this, you're likely part of what we loosely refer to as the [SDL] Tridion [Technical] Community. You might sell, implement, or support Tridion. You might actually be a customer. But with our powers combined... we umm... help customers.

We serve customers, specifically enterprise technologists. If we do that well, you benefit. "You" might be a content author, an IT resource, a consultant, an chief executive, or even sales.

To help those enterprise technologists, what do you know now that you wish you knew when you started with Tridion?

Inspect Component XML With C#

If you want to see the source XML of a Tridion component, which is more intuitive or appealing to you?

•  <xsl:copy-of select=".">
• component.Content.OuterXml
• Clicking on view source tab

XSLT

I typically use three XSL functions to dig around an XML source when doing XSLT template development. When in doubt, a copy-of is GPS for XSLT.

But Now...

I'm compelled to revisit my set of templating and rending tools which have, up-until-now, focused on XSLT and the Content Delivery API.

SDL Tridion Lisp Mediator

Long used by Computer Science students and AI researchers, Lisp is one awesome language.

Inspired by Paul Graham's story about Lisp's role Viaweb, an early online store platform, and having recnetly seen Lambda Meme's post on dynamic websites I wanted to wire-up an SDL Tridion Lisp mediator.

I have the basic get-packageitem() and set-stringitem() methods, but haven't implemented Template Building Block (TBB) parameters just yet.

Here's the basic flavor of the parenthetical-and-recursive-syntax that everyone loves from computer science:

(html 
 (head 
   (title (page-title)))
     (body (h1 component-title)
       (div get-componentpresentation(componentpresentation component-id template-id)))))