Paul Vincent Nolasco

Component of the Month by Paul N.  (aka. COMP – Simple and sensible… Besides it’s not technical enough without an acronym right?) The logo is derived from CQ changed to the color theme of a brick since components are the “bricks” (i.e. foundation) of a CQ site.

Today marks the first of the many releases from my blog. I’ve always wanted to do this ever since I’ve built my first component for CQ. The main issue that I had was building a component that doesn’t infringe the privacy of my clients. Well, to get around this I’ve decided that any component that I’ll be building for this feature will be done in a generic way. Something that can be tweak to tailor to your project’s need. Also, I’ll be sticking to common components that appears in multitudes of site. The out-of-the-box components with CQ are quite generic but some of them can be improved and some common ones are missing. I’ll be focusing on solving this problem.

Each release will have the following details:

1. Full description and usage of the component

2. How to install/configure/integrate it with your current instance.

3. Because there’s always a Geometrixx site in any CQ instance the components will always reside under the “/apps/geometrixx/comp”. For the component group it always used “CQ Comp”. For the clientlibs, it always reside within the component and will have a category “CQ.Comp”.

4. Screenshots! Lots of them. (Ideally I can host the component in a public facing CQ site, unfortunately I don’t have this capability… yet…)

Notice I purposely left the discussion of the code. The reason is I don’t want this feature to be too technical. I’m hoping that in the future regular non-technical users will be able to visit my blog and pick a component install it without fuss and start using it immediately.  The full package will be available so you can easily just look at the code and figure it out on your own.

Well without further ado on my next post, the first release will be the commonly used “Horizontal Navigation“.

Here’s a scenario for you…

“Your mission should you chose to accept is to build a CQ site in four weeks and all you have is a series of design comps”

Sounds fun eh? Well it actually happens in most projects that I’ve been in. You see in most cases clients decide to build a new site in the following order:

1. Client buys CQ/WEM.

2. Client hires design firm to design the new site.

3. Client hire us to implement the site based on the design comps.

So where/how do you start? (That’s usually the question that clients ask us on the first day of the engagement).

Before I go technical here, there’s ALWAYS one thing that should come first regardless of the project: Business first.

So understand what the project is all about, why CQ/WEM was purchased and what is its driving purpose. Project success are measured not by the elegance of the design nor the complexity of the code, but rather meeting (and exceeding!) the expectations.

Once that is clear then it’s a matter of following few simple rules in the “comps-to-components” translation. (Note, it would be easier to follow the instructions below with samples. Unfortunately most samples that I have are client sensitive data, and it’s hard to find samples online).

1. Identify the templates – Design comps always have some sort of pattern. Even though most designs are quite open-ended and not CMS-optimized (i.e. Most design firms don’t under the concept of re-usability, hence pages are usually designed as pretty as possible without any further thought how it would be translated to code), there is a pattern. Page design usually have a footer and a header and a variation of content in the middle. Whether there’s a left, right or top navigation, there is a pattern.

In most cases, there will always be a “Home Page Template” and a “Default Page Template” (i.e. templates that is used to design internal pages). A Default Page Template can usually be broken down to multiple other templates. It all depend whether you want to create: content templates (templates are used to make it easier/faster for authors to create content without adding any other component), generic templates (templates are open-ended and can add components), or a mix of both. The key here is you want it to be simple and it make sense for authors to use it.

2. Identify the components – This is the most difficult thing in deciding what is a component and what is not based on the comps. It’s easy to take a look and see the structure of the design. There’s a footer there, a header here, a navigation on the side, and so on and so forth. However, the key here is figuring and answering a few things: How will the user insert/edit the content? How will the content be stored? Where does it come from? What is its behavior? As you notice, the theme here is: content. Content is king in the world of CMS. Identifying components should always answer these questions.

However, despite all of these… keep the design simple. Do not complicate the component and make it do too many things at once. You should always think of it as a simple method that does one thing and one thing only. In some cases, you have to make it complex but try to keep it at a minimum.

That’s basically it! Pretty straightforward and simple right? Heh… But as always, practice makes perfect. Enjoy cq-fying those designs!

Additional Notes:

• Keep in mind that most site designer have no clue how CMS works in general. So if you had to pick, a good component/template design is better than following the design comp.
• Design comps are just guidelines. At the end of the day  a CQ designer/architect has the final say on how it should look and what make sense in terms of maintaining the code and making it flexible for future changes.
• Make sure to study the OOTB components/templates that comes with CQ. They’re the best guidelines out there. It’s ships with the product for a reason.
• Finally… If all else fails you can always blame the designer.

“There’s no such thing as an ADEP WEM Kool-aid drinker… only pragmatist”.

What in the world am I talking about?

For the “culturally-challenge” individuals when someone is referred to as “Kool-Aid drinker”  it means someone who blindly believes in a certain ideology without questioning common sense. For the “acronym-challenge” individuals ADEP stands for “Adobe Digital Enterprise Platform” and WEM stands for “Web Experience Management” (Take note that WEM is one of the solution that is provided by the ADEP platform, it used to be referred as Communique but the marketing team doesn’t like the spelling or something).

Pragmatist is someone who make sense, a realist, or pretty much someone who for all purposes believes that in practice lies the true meaning. I’m a pragmatist by heart, and so far it did me well.

So why do I consider those that admire the ADEP WEM platform as pragmatist? Well there are multiple things but to get started I’ll first explain it by listing out the things that I admire about WEM.

1. One-click wonder – In my previous  consulting engagements where I’m working with other CMS systems, installations can take as long as a week. That’s just installation of the core product. If you want to install the rest of its part then you would have a day or two more. In ADEP WEM, a click or one-execution of command will do the trick. This saves a consultant the hassle of getting everything right and saves the client some consulting budget that could be re-allocate in what actually counts (i.e. building the site).
2.  It’s all about the package - Compare to other CMS systems almost everything a typical enterprise site would need comes with the core WEM solution. Digital Asset Management is part of the product. A web-based IDE is included or a desktop-based IDE can be downloaded for free. A source-code control system FileVault is included as well. It has it’s own app server with CQSE. It includes basic analytics gathering. Deployment from the “authoring side” to the “publishing side” is part of the product, no need for a separate installation for a FTP like deployment tool.  No database is needed — this saves time and quite a headache since getting any database schema defined by the DB Team of the client usually would need to jump to a series of approvals.  It even comes with an “App Store/Android Market” like capability with Package Share. Oh and that “mobile-revolution” we’re experiencing right now well, it’s there too emulated for your viewing pleasure. In all, with installation alone, it probably saves the client at least two weeks of engagement or if you equate that to the usual consulting rate it results to about $10,000 – 20,000 of savings! (Who doesn’t like saving money?).
3.  We’re open 24/7 – The core technology is open to the public. JCR, Sling, and OSGI are all open source and can be easily extended using libraries that are available outside the hallowed and secured halls of Adobe.  This results to easy integration with custom systems and environment (which, almost 99.9% sure any engagement would have some sort of custom integration with their system).

In summary… What kind of person wants to build something but want it to be: easy to build, comes with almost everything you need, and “Oh, just in case you’re missing something you can add it in with no restriction”? Yeah… that’s right a pragmatist.

Welcome to my blog!

A quick introduction. I’ve been working with enterprise content management system from Vignette’s VRD system, Interwoven’s TeamSite, and other open source such as Joomla and Mambo. I’ve started website development around 1999 when I launched my own community of music video editors at: www.nkode.net. Ever since then I’ve enjoyed working in this field and I was lucky enough that my career path lead me to one of the top web innovators of today with Adobe Systems.

I’ve been a technical consultant with two other well-respected software company: HP-Autonomy and OpenText-Vignette and one thing that I learn is that there’s no such thing as a perfect content management system. However, (regardless on how bias this might sound) Adobe’s WEM (formerly known as Communique) is perhaps one of the neatest product that I’ve worked on in building websites. What sets it apart from other product is how robust and well-conceived it is. Heck to start, tell me another CMS that has it’s own web-based IDE? But seriously though, the reason why I think ADEP WEM’s platform is unique than all other CMS I’ve worked before is its repository — CRX. The flexibility of having everything in one location creates a very unique system.

Well, enough of this technical stuff…  I hope you guys/gals enjoy reading my blog. I’ll try to keep it easy to read, more hands-on examples and pictures (in short… NOT BORING… that’s tough for any tech topic). I’ll be posting topics mostly as it relates to Adobe’s Digital Enterprise platform, however I’ll squeeze in some tech topics unrelated to Adobe but related to some CMS or the overall tech industry.

Redundant as it may be… But again I warmly welcome you to my blog!