Open Text UK Web Solutions Community Day 2009 Review

On Wednesday 17th June 2008 I attended the Open Text UK Web Solutions Community Day – completing my trifecta of RedDot CMS conferences for this year.

4th European RedDot Usergroup Conference Review – Part 1

Paul and I attended the 4th European RedDot Usergroup Conference on Tuesday May 19th 2009, held at the National Archives, London. This was my first time at a RedDot Usergroup conference – so my aim was to get a feel for the RedDot Usergroup, learn a few things and contribute where I could. The RedDot Usergroup is a non-profit organisation, so the conference was no free lunch. Which means evaluating the value for money for the conference and also whether to join up for an annual membership.

CMS Vendor Meme

CMS Vendor Meme – Many moons ago now (26th February 2009), Kas Thomas – an analyst at CMS Watch – wrote an article “A reality checklist for vendors”. A month later (17th March 2009), Day – a CMS vendor – responded with “Introducing the ‘CMS Vendor Meme’” – scoring themselves against Kas’ criteria and challenging other CMS vendors to do the same. Open Text responded (”Open Text on the CMS Vendor Meme”) on the 20th March 2009. What seemed to be missing, however, is some client and developer feedback on specific CMS vendor responses.

Web Development Tips For Web Solutions Management Server (previously RedDot CMS)

One(!) of my current projects is about to have some web development done prior to being built in Web Solutions Management Server (previously RedDot CMS) which has started me thinking about some of the lessons I have learnt through this process previously. Passing these tips on to whomever is doing the web development, whether it be yourself, a colleague or an outside agency should make your job a lot easier!

Open Text Content Day UK 2009 Review

Open Text Content Day UK 2009 Review – The day was broken up into the initial keynote address(es) followed by six breakout sessions with choices from across eight tracks, interspersed with refreshments and lunch. To let you know where I am coming from, I am a Web Solutions Management Server developer – pretty much the coal face (development wise) of only one of a plethora of Open Text products. Consequently, I did not have high expectations for the day – I did not expect anything technical from the keynotes and out of 47 sessions, I think I had only managed to identify two that appeared Web Solutions Management Server specific.

The One True Container – Part III

The Return of the King – Include Container

What is the solution? Taking the process that led us from “copy and paste” to “header and footer” to its logical conclusion – “one include container” to contain all common code. How do…

The One True Container – Part II

The Two Towers – Header and Footer

What I have tended to see “in the wild” (and how my first project went) was what I call “header and footer” base templates. Basically the process is the same as for “copy and…

The One True Container – RedDot CMS Tutorial – Part I

One Container to rule them all, One Container to find them,
One Container to bring them all and in the templates bind them
In the CMS of OpenTextRedDot where the Content lies

Prologue

Ok, first up – a warning and some history. This is a…

Escaping RedDot

In today’s episode, we will cover:

• How to safely(ish) use the output of content elements in scripts within our RedDot templates.
• How not to use the output of content elements in scripts within our RedDot templates.
• Reinforce that Preview is not the same as Publish!

Nothing…

SmartEdit and Javascript

If you have Javascript in your website, and have implemented your Javascript files as templates in RedDot CMS (version 7.5), linked in to your HTML page via an anchor placeholder, you will most likely have come across this issue –…