by

Default Schemas for Tridion: An Atomic Update

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Almost a year ago, I sent out a quick post that I’d created a Default Schemas for Tridion project on Github.  Because I wrote that post on a Friday afternoon, I didn’t offer many details. But today’s Monday…

What’s new?

No huge drastic changes. I just cleaned some stuff out, renamed some things. Added a few items here and there.

New stuff

Embeddable Schemas

Somewhere I got the idea in my head for this thing called “atomic schemas”. I could’ve sworn that Alvin Reyes gave me the term, but he says he didn’t. Even if he didn’t coin the term, the idea came from him:

Create a schema in its smallest,most  irreducible, and reusable form (like an atom). Then, build more complex schemas out of simpler schemas.

Atomic Content Modeling™ and Atomic Schemas™ are the motivator behind these embeddable schemas.

  • Embedded Header
  • Embedded Legal
  • Embedded Media Metadata (a confusing name, I know)
  • Embedded Video Attributes

You’ll notice that several of the content schemas contain an embedded header and an embedded legal. The header is so that you have a consistent introduction to a piece of content. The embedded legal is because some clients need to have a legal ID number attached to every piece of content.

Content Schemas

I’ve renamed all of the content schemas to “Generic” so that you can distinguish between them, and any you might make specifically for the client. The big change is that there are a lot of  lists. The thought behind this is that an Image List or a Video List could be used as a precursor to a carousel or a gallery. You’d almost definitely need more than what’s there, but…think of this more as a bootstrap, of sorts.

  • Generic Component List
  • Generic Image List
  • Generic Link Link List
  • Generic Video List
  • Generic Video

Categories

Categories and Keywords, as used for taxonomy, are way too client-specific. But there are two that could be used almost anywhere:

  • Social Media
  • Aspect Ratios

You can use those aspect ratios for any videos, and you can use the social media for…well…making social media links or something.

TL;DR

Really? This was too long for you? Have you read my other stuff. I could really draw this out.

I updated a Github project. I’m working on documenting the schemas over on the Wiki. Go check out the project —and please, help improve it.