tridion

Join the SDL Web Community Slack

Ryan Durkin, , , , , 1 Comment

Tom Simm recently posted on the SDL Community about the possibility of an SDL Slack and it turns out there isn’t one out there yet (other than the MVP Slack). I thought this was a great idea as I know a lot of useful conversations go on in the MVP Slack (it’s not just about secret MVP things).

I also know that there are a lot of knowledgeable people out there in the SDL Web community that aren’t MVP’s and it would be great to gather all these like minded people together. So after a quick discussion with Rob, Chris and Tom we are pleased to announce the grand opening of the SDL Web Slack team!

We’ve added channels for all the different products (#tridion, #smarttarget, #dxa) as well as #tds2017 which is for chatting about the up and coming Tridion Developer Summit.

In order to join we just need you to fill in this quick Google form which explains the guidelines of the community and then one of us will send you the link.

If you have any questions or comments then feel free to reach out to myself, Rob, Chris or Tom.

Join the SDL Web Community Slack

SDL Web UK Meetup April 2017

Ryan Durkin, , , , , Leave a comment

This April saw the return of the UK SDL Web Meetup in Manchester which seems to be a hotbed of Tridion talent. It had only been 3 years since the last one…

First up to speak was Rob Stevenson-Legget from Building Blocks who spoke about how to set up your DD4T or DXA web application in docker containers.

Rob Stevenson-Legget from Building Blocks

It was a really interesting talk especially as using docker containers seem to be the in thing at the moment. Using it for 2013 SP1 seems to be working well and I look forward to his next talk where he has it working perfectly for SDL Web 8.5.

Second up was Jonathan Williams from Stage Two who spoke about his experience scaling SDL Web 8 in Production. It was great to hear some real world issues and see some people watching nod along as they had the same issues.

Last up was Bart Koopman, one of the Product Managers for SDL Web, and he presented a roadmap of DXA.

Bart Koopman from SDL

This talk was the one with the most audience participation which was great to see. The roadmap looks good but the key to the success has to be it’s community involvement, taking feedback from those people who have implemented DD4T and DXA many times before.

You can watch at listen to the whole meetup here (including the beer and pizza breaks): https://recordings.join.me/TPTrIZjwZUmKhfvq7nEtBg

Thanks to Stage Two for providing the refreshments and to SpaceportX for providing the free space to us.

If you would like to attend the next Meetup then make sure you get signed up. If you would like to talk then please connect with me on LinkedIn.

SDL Web UK Meetup April 2017

SDL DXA Component Links In Page Metadata

Ryan Durkin, , , , Leave a comment

In my DXA solution I was trying to change the Page Metadata to come from a Component rather but unfortunately it didn’t work out of the box.

tridion-page-metadata

Taking a look inside the ProcessMetadataField method in the DefaultModelBuilder class the code is written to work with an Embedded Schema:

if (field.FieldType==FieldType.Embedded)

But when it drops into the else statement to resolve the Component Link then it doesn’t get any content back as that Page Metadata Component is not published.

With a quick tweak to the method you can add an extra else if for a Component Link type and this is now working:

else if (field.FieldType == FieldType.ComponentLink)
{
    foreach (IComponent component in field.LinkedComponentValues)
    {
       foreach (IField subfield in component.Fields.Values)
       {
         ProcessMetadataField(subfield, meta, localization);
       }
    }
}

I also needed to change the link level value to 2 in the Generate dynamic page TBB on the Render Page Content Modular Template in order to get the Metadata Component values in the published JSON:

link-level-getpagecontent

SDL DXA Component Links In Page Metadata

DXA Preview Plugin for DXA 1.2 and SDL Tridion 2013 SP1

Ryan Durkin, , , , , , , Leave a comment

Mark Williams has created a really useful Alchemy Plugin to preview DXA websites in Tridion. Unfortunately for me this was only for the DD4T Tridion 2013 Provider and I needed it for 2013 SP1 as I am building a DXA 1.2 website.

Away I went to get the source from Github to modify the 2013 SP1 Provider that DXA 1.2 uses but I soon realised I was modifying the wrong version. One Stack Exchange question later, Bart had hooked me up with the exact version that I needed to modify which was 2.0.5-beta.

So I have modified the Page Provider to bring over the same code that Mark wrote and voila! I have a working DXA Preview Alchemy Plugin for DXA 1.2 and the DD4T 2013 SP1 Provider.

Only the TridionPageProvider.GetContentByURL() method is modified and here is the code: https://gist.github.com/RyanDurkin/daeb5cfbe0f8a7170e88c9e83c71fe98

Hopefully this will help somebody in the same situation.

DXA Preview Plugin for DXA 1.2 and SDL Tridion 2013 SP1

SDL Web 8 Technical Deep Dive and Future Direction Video

Ryan Durkin, , , Leave a comment

If you haven’t managed to get your hands on SDL Web 8 or have missed all the presentations and webinars (like myself) then I’ve just found that there is a great webinar that Nuno Linhares recorded that you can find here: https://community.sdl.com/products-solutions/solutions/customer_experience_cloud/digital-experience/tridion/w/wiki/818.future-direction-roadmap

He explains all the new features as well as diving deeper into the changes in the Content Manager and Content Delivery API as well as explaining the infamous Topology Manager.

SDL Web 8 Technical Deep Dive and Future Direction Video