SDL SmartTarget, marketing and e-Commerce solution, released

Early June 2010 SDL announced the launch of SDL SmartTarget that enhances SDL Tridion Web Content Management Platform by enabling easy delivery of dynamic relevancy, predictive targeting and affiliate marketing programs within a single, simple-to-use interface. 

Micro-Site - Maxi-Impact

I recently worked on rolling out an SDL Microsite and was impressed by how quickly this could be achieved with SDL Tridion 2009. Since I left our Professional Services team a few years back, I had not really worked on a full-scale project and it was good to see that quick implementations are no rocket science. After talking about the project to fellow marketers, I realized however that planning microsites for many of my peers is still paired with a general hesitation. So, let's demystify microsites.  

Training Matters

Training - the acquisition of knowledge, skills and competencies - is an essential part of any employees toolkit for their daily jobs and without it employees will struggle to do their job in an efficient and successful manner. For an organization, it is crucial that the right people are trained well to use tools, such as a Content Management System (CMS), so that the organization can fully leverage the potential of their investment. 

Developing an Extensible SDL Tridion Workflow Framework

The SDL Tridion Web Content Management System provides a flexible approval workflow engine which is tied directly into the vision of Content Management held by Tridion. The system does not readily integrate with business processes. 

Five steps to make it personal

All visitors, even anonymous ones, want information that relates to their interests. If they dont find it on your website, they will look elsewhere. If they do, they'll keep coming back. According to Gartner (source: a Framework for Creating the Future Customer-Centric Web, Feb 2009) by 2012, organizations that lack customer-centric web strategies will soon trail competitors that have them. I'm often asked how you should you go about implementing website personalization. So here are my top 5 tips. 

Ode to the Form

In the previous article, I looked at interaction offline and online and the differences between the two. As I said then, there are a lot of different ways to create an interactive experience for visitors and to learn about their preferences. Undoubtedly one way of doing so is via online forms, because this is where you can directly ask your audience what they expect and think. 

Online Interaction Matters

As little as ten years ago, online communication tended to be purely one-sided. Websites presented themselves as a brochure-ware monologue to the visitor. As marketers, we usually did not know who visited our websites and what people were looking for. In the majority of cases, we were not even in control of our internet presence. The familiar old statement that we knew we were wasting budget, but had no idea which bit, was as valid for the online channel as for all the others. For our audience, the message was clear: Love it or leave it, sink or swim. 

Buddies on Tour

They seem to be spreading like a plague, reaching the four corners of the globe... well, a little dramatic but as you can see from SDL's Buddy Tour page the SDL Buddies are reaching some far flung places. Hawaiian beaches, Norwegian snow (complete with an awesome scarf) and the mountains of New Zealand, the buddies seem to be travelling the globe. 

Using P&P in Distributed Environments

Mihai Cadariu shows how to solve the challenge that occurs when you use the Content Delivery software component called Personalization & Profiling (P&P) on a different server than the server to which the Web site visitor logs in.  

SDL Tridion Certification!

The SDL Tridion Certification Program for Technical Consultants is a Professional Services initiative targeted at the SDL Tridion Technical Consultant community.

SDL Tridion 2009 Released!

SDL Tridion, leader in global Web Content Management (WCM), today announces the launch of SDL Tridion 2009, a unified online marketing suite providing a complete end-to-end solution for customer engagment. The platform will allow marketers to creat and deploy fully intergrated campaigns incorporating customer managemnt and interaction, mulit-channel marketing and web content management. 

Digital Asset Center

Photos, videos and sound are a crucial part of your marketing communication to provide your target audience with a compelling message and a great online experience. Digital Asset Center enables you to produce, manage and distribute multiple types of multimedia assets. The eXtension is not an SDL Tridion product, but an integration with the SDL Tridion platform that enriches the capabilities of Marketing Communications 

Using SDL Tridion Object Caching with Apache Active MQ

In R5.3 GA, SDL Tridion introduced Object Caching using JMS as a mechanism for synchronization of the caches. The mechanism allows cached objects, cached by the websites, to be invalidated in the event of a newer version of the object being deployed to the website. JMS based messaging provides a more scalable mechanism for cache updates than RMI based messaging which was the only option prior to R5.3.  

Community Technology Preview of SDL Tridion 2011

The end of development for the SDL Tridion 2011 release is approaching. This release includes a number of enhancements requested by customers and partners. In order to provide our community with firsthand knowledge into the release and with a chance to explore these changes and provide feedback SDL is releasing the product for Community Technology Preview (CTP) in the period of July to August 2010. 

Magazine 2010

This year's edition of Impact is now available! This year's magazine features articles on today's reality for online communication: creating and building customer intimacy online through targeted marketing. Making an impression in an online world.  

What is the SDL Tridion Object Cache?

The SDL Tridion Object Cache is an in-memory cache that stores frequently used objects from the Content Data Store. The cache keeps objects available to applications for repeated usage. This prevents SDL Tridion Content Delivery from having to retrieve objects from the Content Data Store for each request. Typically caching includes linking information, metadata and component presentations. The Object Cache is designed to significantly improve the performance of your Web sites and is available to every Content Delivery module. SDL Tridion recommends implementing it in every production environment. 

Seven Sins of Website Translation

Today, I had to do some research on the web. As I surfed in this sea of information, I put on my consumer glasses and had a closer look at the translation features of these sites. Working for a global Web Content Management vendor, I was surprised by what I saw. And because I did not get far with my intended research, I decided to at least share with you what to me are the Seven Sins of website translation: 

MVP Award Program

The SDL Tridion MVP Award program is our way to thank all the great professionals that freely share their knowledge, real world experience and objective feedback to help others implementing and enhancing our technology. An MVP award is given to those who offer exceptional contributions to the SDL Tridion community. 

Safeguard to deliver brand consistency

Safeguard is a website quality and compliance-monitoring tool powered by Magus ActiveStandards and is integrated with SDL Tridions Web Content Management System. By complying with a wide variety of guidelines and rules that communication specialists have created, the tool significantly contributes to improved SEO, visitor experience, usability and brand value. 

Q-go integration demo video

To better understand what your web site visitors are asking for on your websites, natural language search helps you to increase customer satisfaction. 

Maintaining SDL Tridion Databases

The SDL Tridion uses two and possibly three different databases. The SDL Tridion Content Manager Database (called Tridion_cm by default) that is used to store all Tridion content, the SDL Tridion Logging Database (called Tridion_cm_log by default) which holds all error and warning messages that the Content Manager server logs and the SDL Tridion Content Delivery Database (called Tridion_broker by default) which stores all dynamic content and metadata information that is available for the Content Broker, Dynamic Linking, Dynamic Content Delivery and Personalization and Profiling on the Presentation Servers.  

Connector 2009 for InDesign released

Web and print are a proven combination in marketing campaigns. However, it is a difficult and time consuming task to synchronize the messaging in your printed collateral with your Web channel. Connector for InDesign integrates the Web- and print channel and manages these channels from a single source, hence guaranteeing unified messaging, and improving efficiency and shorter time-to-market.  

Visual Studio 2005 To COM and .NET 1.1

Making your Visual Studio 2005 code work with COM and .NET 1.1 This article explains: * how you can make code you develop in Visual Studio 2005 visible to COM applications * how you can make code you develop in Visual Studio 2005 run in a .NET 1.1 environment  

Monitoring Tridion Publishing with Tridion Application Monitoring

SDL Tridion introduced Application Monitoring as part of the SDL Tridion R5.3 GA release. This functionality enables Administrators to monitor certain aspects of the environment to ensure optimal uptime of essential processes. Tridion Application Monitoring can be extended to enable Administrators to monitor even more than what is delivered out of the box.  

10 tips for installing SDL Tridion R5

There is more to installing SDL Tridion R5 than simply clicking 'Next'. The following few simple guidelines can help you install SDL Tridion R5 in a way that leads to less issues and better results.  

Dynamic Linking in ASP.NET websites

This article gives a detailed step-by-step guide to configuring both your ASP.NET Web application and your SDL Tridion Content Manager to enable the publishing of pages that contain dynamic links using the new ASP.NET Server Controls introduced in version 5.3 of SDL Tridion R5. Although all this information is available in the standard documentation, it is spread out over several documents. This article brings the information together in one place. To perform this task, follow the numbered steps below.