Today SDL released version 9.5 of its content management system, SDL Tridion Sites.

Version 9.5 introduces the biggest change to the CMS user interface since version 2011, nearly 10 years ago. Other major updates include boosts to Search and Content Delivery.

Experience Space: The new Interface

Named “Experience Space,” the new SDL Tridion Sites user interface is geared towards content creators and editors. To compare the new interface with the old interface, let’s use the Toyota Camry as an analogy. The old interface is the 2010 Toyota Camry — does its job perfectly, will never let you down, but looks a bit out of date by today’s standards. Tridion Sites 9.5 is the 2020 Toyota Camry — looks impressive and there’s a lot more tech centered around making driving easier and safer.

Experience Space is designed around the user, making the process of creating and distributing content far easier. The refresh looks and behaves like a modern web app, in that short cuts and behaviors are added based on the context of the stage of content creation. 

Gone are the multiple pop-ups for content. In its place is a dashboard-like view broken into columns around location, editing items, and properties.

On top of that, SDL has introduced a brand new Rich Text Editor (RTE) that feels like you’re working in a piece of content rather than typing into a static text field. Additionally, the new RTE has built-in accessibility checks, copy/paste (without destroying content), and table editing.

Elastic Search for published content

New for version 9.5 is out-of-the-box support for Elastic search-based searching. Elastic searching is more intuitive for finding published content within your websites, applications across pages, components (content blocks), and even binaries. Should your applications also include content managed within SDL’s Docs (DITA XML) platform, this is also included as part of the search-providing search capability across both unstructured and structured content.

Headless Content

SDL’s content delivery was headless-capable long before the term headless was a buzzword and has always given it an advantage in the enterprise content management space. Version 9.5 offers new publishing in JSON format which can be consumed via it’s content services from any device with GraphQL API capabilities.

Upgrading and learning more about SDL Tridion Sites 9.5

For more info on version 9.5’s new graphical user interface, including a product feature that was originally implemented by Content Bloom, take a look back at Pankaj’s sneak peek post.

Content Bloom is SDL’s largest implementation and consultancy services partner in North America and a certified training partner.  So if you’d like to know more about how SDL’s new CMS can support your digital marketing goals, we’ve got you covered.

Contact us to talk with our team of experienced SDL MVPs and certified consultants.