Multilingual Websites

0 - 60 websites in under 90 days

Background

AIR1 is the brand name for AdBlue, a nitrogen oxide emission reduction solution for large diesel vehicles which is helping make diesel greener, on a global scale. The requirement was for a new AIR1 website with new information architecture, features and creative.

The Yara Group which owns AIR1 had previously chosen SDL Tridion as their overall strategic CMS and was in the process of applying it to other sites.

AIR1 already had a set of wireframes, information architecture and creative design in place. Now they needed a specialist technical company to plan and build the SDL Tridion structure, templates and technical integrations.

Building Blocks were recommended by SDL Tridion to AIR1 to implement their new website.

The timescale for the project was extremely short, as AIR1 were due to decommission their existing 3rd party CMS before the end of 2009 - effectively giving only six weeks to get the project live.

By completing the English site before the deadline, fifty-nine further versions were to be subsequently built using Tridion blueprinting. Nine languages in total would be utilised, including Chinese.

Solution

  • A best practice SDL Tridion 5.3 blueprint model and schema definitions were created
  • Building Block's front end developer then created client-side HTML and CSS code, based on designs supplied by Yara
  • To accelerate development, Building Blocks were able to minimise the number of templates necessary, and reuse a number of modular C# TBBs from the standard Building Blocks library. These tried and tested templates significantly reduced risk
  • Tridion content delivery modules used to publish and display press releases, stored in the content broker database
  • Prototype filling station locator created for Yara team to test
  • Best practice approach adopted for implementing buttons and labels - German and Chinese languages being successfully accommodated despite issues of lengthy text and character sets
  • Established a plan for Yara to deploy into live environment
  • After first three sites, Building Blocks were able to deliver seven a day for almost two weeks
  • In the period mid Nov 2009 to mid Feb 2010, sixty-one sites went live

Technologies Used

  • SDL Tridion R5.3
  • ASP.NET 2.0
  • jQuery
  • Google Maps API
  • Oracle 10g database