Components

Owned by Zachary Restifo
Last updated: Mar 19, 2021
4 min read

Components are individual pieces of content that are used to add content to a page. 

  • There are two categories of components: Standard and Multimedia.

  • Depending on the Schema that you select for your component, different fields will populate and dictate what kind of information the component contains.

The following instructions will provide information on adding components to a page.

What You Will Learn

  • The relationship between components and pages.

  • The difference between standard and multimedia components.

  • How to start building components.

Instructions for how to create specific components within these two main types can be found in these instructions:

Tridion Schemas and Templates

 

Table of Contents

 

Standard Components

Standard Components generally present you with a set series of text fields and options to be filled out with information to display on your site.

To create a standard component:

  1. Open the Building Blocks folder of your publication, and navigate to an appropriate folder to create the new component.

    • Usually, this will be a folder with the same name as the section of the site you are adding it to.

  2. In the Create tab (highlighted in yellow below), click the top portion of the New Component button (highlighted in blue below).

Adding a new Component.

 

A new tab in your browser will automatically appear so you can enter information about the Component (shown below):

 

After selecting new component, a new tab/window will appear. In the schema menu, you select the type of component you want to create (highlighted in yellow). The fields will populate automatically.

 

Only two fields will appear: Name and Schema.

  1. Name: Enter an appropriate name for your component, such as "Home Page Landing" or "About Us Intro" to help identify what the component is for when you build your page.

    • This name will not appear anywhere on your website, so it should be as specific as possible.

  2. Schema: Depending on the schema you select from the drop down menu (highlighted in yellow above), fields for information specific to that schema's use will appear.

    • The Content schema is the most widely used schema since it is a text component which you can also add images to.

    • Instructions for specific schemas and their uses can be found in the Tridion Schemas and Templates section.

  3. Fill out the fields of the component.

  4. When you're done editing, in the Home tab click Save & Close (highlighted in blue above).

Component names often include their schema, such as "Content: Home Page Landing."

 

Multimedia Components

In Tridion, Multimedia Components refer to image and document files.

  • Multimedia components are in a different category than standard components because they are used to upload a file to Tridion, rather than just fill out information fields.

To create a multimedia component:

  1. Find an appropriate folder in Building Blocks to create the component.

    • Most publications contain "Image" and "Document" folders which hold all of the images or documents for the site in one place.

  2. In the Create tab (highlighted in yellow below), click the bottom portion of the New Component button (highlighted in blue below).

  3. Select New Multimedia Component from the drop down menu (highlighted in green below).

Adding a new Multimedia Component.

 

A new tab in your browser will automatically appear so you can enter information about the Multimedia Component (shown below):

 

When selecting New Multimedia Component a new tab/window will appear. In the schema drop down menu, you will select the type of file you're uploading into Tridion (yellow).

 

  1. Only two fields will appear: Name and Schema.

    • Name: Enter an appropriate name for your document or image, such as "Faculty Guidelines 2012-2013" or "Surgeon OR Photo" to help identify what the component is for.

      • This name will not appear anywhere on your website, so it should be as specific as possible.

    • Schema: Unlike a standard component, which will change the types of fields that are available, the schema for multimedia components just determines the type of file you're uploading.

      • Select Image or Document.

  2. Once you select Image or Document, you will see two dropdown menus: Multimedia type and Resource type.

    • You can ignore these fields, Tridion will automatically detect what kind of image or document you're uploading.

  3. Click Load from Disk...

  4. In the window that opens, find the image or document you'd like to upload.

  5. Click Open.

  6. Click Save & Close.

 

Instructional Video