Basic Content Manager concepts

For content authors, the most important building blocks for creating (Web) content are Components and Pages and the most important concept is BluePrinting which manages content sharing and localizing between Web site Publications.

Components
Components define text or multimedia content:
  • In the Content Manager Explorer, Components are displayed as forms with fields that you can fill in.
  • In Experience Manager, Components are displayed within a Page.
Components are based on Schemas that define the kinds of fields you can specify.
Pages
Pages define Web content. When you have created Components, you need to add them to Pages and publish these Pages to a Web site.
For each Component you add to a Page, you need to select a Component Template to define what the Component should look like on the published Web page. (The combination of a Component and Component Template on a Page is referred to as a Component Presentation.)
When you create a Page you also need to define what the Page should look like. You do this by selecting a Page Template that defines the overall layout of the Page and its look & feel.
BluePrinting
A BluePrint is a hierarchy of Publications in which Parent Publications share content with Child Publications. BluePrinting enables you to reuse structure, content, and design between Publications. The BluePrint Viewer provides a visualization of the Parent-Child relationships for an item within a BluePrint:
In this BluePrint, you can see the SDL Tridion 2011 Launch Component is shared from the 00_Corporate Publication to its Child Publications. The following image shows the 02_France Publication in the Content Manager Explorer. You can see that in this Publication SDL Tridion 2011 Launch is a (Local Copy) which means the shared item has been localized and is now editable:
Child Publications can contain a combination of:
  • Shared items from Parent Publications (read-only items)
  • Local copies of shared items (editable copies of shared items created by localizing them)
  • Local items (items created in the Child Publication)