Seablick Consulting

DNN OpenForce 08: Intro to SEO with DNN

Tom Kraak — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 19:29:00 GMT

I happy to officially announce that I’ve been invited to speak at DotNetNuke OpenForce North America 2008. As last year, the 3 day conference is co-located with Microsoft’s DevConnections and held November 10 – 13 in Las Vegas.

Besides my DNN search engine optimization presentation, I will join forces with my good friend Vasilis Terzopoulos for a session on Advanced Skinning with DotNetNuke 5.0.

Intro to Search Engine Optimization with DotNetNuke will focus on the basics of on-page SEO such as HTML meta tags, quality copy, and standard-compliant skins. I’ll also touch on XML sitemaps, robots.txt as well as modules and tools used to impress Google and company. No previous online marketing and SEO knowledge required.

In Advanced Skinning with DotNetNuke 5.0, Vasilis and I will attempt to take your skinning skills to the next level by sharing advanced skinning concepts and techniques which we have deployed for clients like NYSE Euronext, the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum and our own sites. And in time for Cambrian, we will demonstrate how to take advantage of the new skinning capabilities introduced in DNN 5.

For further details including the entire speaker lineup, sessions, venue and registration info visit OpenForce08.com or DevConnections.com/openforce. OpenForce Europe 2008 info is available here.

Hope to see you on the Vegas Strip!

Cambrian (DNN 5.0) Beta 6 Out Now

Tom Kraak — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 22:39:00 GMT

Last Sunday, beta 6 of DotNetNuke Cambrian has been made available to a larger group than previous betas including DNN Marketplace vendors and project sponsors. According to DNN Corp, this release includes a number of significant bug fixes and provides a first glimpse at the enhanced skinning engine together with the initial release of a new default skin. I’ve just installed beta 6 and will share first impressions next week. Here are other noteworthy tidbits from around the DNN world.

Speaking of DNN 5, Nina Meiers has blogged extensively about beta 5 in a 3 part series covering host settings, extensions, and the new skin uploader. Never shy of words, Nina does a good job of filling the usual documentation void left by DNN Corp.
Cuong Dang launched dnnGallery “with the goal to create a one-stop resource for all business, designers, developers, and DotNetNuke experts to showcase their work.” Currently the site features mostly Cuong’s own creations, but over time it will hopefully grow into a rich collection of “DNN art.”
Out of the same Engage camp comes Chris Hammond who officially launched DotNetNukeBlogs.com, which acts as an aggregator of DNN related blogs from around the Web. Assuming that Chris can convince relevant bloggers to sign on, the site has great potential to grow into a valuable resource especially for DNN newcomers.
With the support of resident skinner and developer Vasilis Terzopoulos, MitchelSellers.com entered the month of July with an attractive new skin … it was about time Mitch :)-

Mitchel also announced a book deal he recently signed with Wrox, a division of Wiley Publishing, Inc. Professional DotNetNuke 5 Module Development is anticipated to hit shelves at the end of 2008. Congratulations!
The start of the summer also brought a few new DNN Project releases including Wiki, UDT, Repository, and Events. Get them here.
AliCommerce announced the highly anticipated 2.0 release of its ecommerce module suite. I’ll publish a detailed review of the module later this month.

What did I miss this week? Feel free to contact me with suggestions or better, contribute via the comments below.

DNN Social Networking: An Interview with Will Morgenweck

Jeff Waters — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 16:21:00 GMT

This is the first in a series of DNN audiocasts we have in store for you. Our goal is uncover the latest DotNetNuke trends while exposing a bit more of the human color lurking behind all this technology.

This show features Will Morgenweck, president of Active Modules, Inc. In this 20 minute interview, Will openly discusses his company, products, and development philosophy. Topics include:

Will’s path to DNN
The evolution of Active Modules, Inc.
Reasons for choosing Active Forums over other Forum solutions
Active Modules’ focus on the business market
The impact of Web 2.0 on Active Modules' product line
The recent acquisition of DNNFusion’s social networking modules
Thoughts on social networking in Cambrian (DNN 5) and beyond
Details on the next major release of Active Forums

Click the Play button above or download the audiocast for offline listening.

Understanding 301 Redirects

Bruce Chapman — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 16:29:00 GMT

From Tom:
Please welcome Bruce Chapman as a seablick.com guest blogger. If you are a “regular” around here, Bruce won’t need much of an introduction as he has made a name for himself in the DNN community as a developer of SEO-focused modules and components. In upcoming blog posts, Bruce will shed light onto the technical side of DNN, SEO, and DNN SEO and I’m thrilled to have him on board … welcome Bruce!

The most important piece of advice for obtaining and maintaining a high position in search engine result pages for your website is to get relevant, one-way, inbound links from other respected websites. Relevant in that the link originates from a page with content related to yours, and the link anchor text preferably contains the keywords you wish to rank highly for. Respected websites are those not involved in shady practices such as link farms, and, ideally, represent an authoritative source.

This advice is given just about everywhere - and for good reason. It's good advice, and quality inbound links will have a greater effect on your search result placement than any other optimization technique. However, there's a problem with collecting inbound links that may not be obvious straight away. The problem appears down the road when you decide to change your site in some way. You may need to reorganize your content into a new structure, or perhaps you want to change the platform the site runs on (not that you ever want to move away from DNN :)- You might wish to change the URL scheme, or simply change the URL of a given page. All of these actions have the same effect: the location of the page has changed.

Here's an example:

You set up a page called http://mydomain.com/myverycoolthing.html.

It's an interesting page, and someone submits it to a social news site. As a result, you get plenty of inbound links to it, and you start to rank well in the search results for searches of 'very cool thing.' But after reading a few articles, you decide the URL would be better if it separated out the keywords with a hyphen. So you rename the page 'my-very-cool-thing.html.'

Once you change the URL of a page in any way, here's what happens:

visitors following that link from the source page will arrive at a page that no longer exists ('page not found' error)
visitors who have bookmarked that page will return to find the page no longer exists
search engine robots will revisit the link to discover it no longer exists and remove it from the search index
search engine robots following the link from the source pages will discover it no longer exists, and the "vote" of those incoming links is removed from your site

You'll start to slip down the search engine results pages, and soon enough you'll disappear from it altogether. You've undone all of that hard work by renaming the page URL.

What are Http status codes?

I've already mentioned '404' in this post, and it's barely past the introduction. A lot of people talk about 404's and 302's like everyone understands them, so here's a jargon-busting refresher on status codes. Status codes are hidden (for the most part) by modern browsers, but I think that's a shame, as they are useful information once you understand them.

Http status codes are the numeric values returned by a web server in response to a user agent (such as your web browser) making a request for a page or other recource. The status code lets the browser know, in a shorthand way, whether or not the web server could fulfil the request. The full list of status codes is quite long, and is good for fixing sleepless nights, but are the most common ones:

200 : Request completed OK (translation : great, here's the page you want!)

301 : Page / Resource permanently moved to new location (translation : we've moved location, please go across the street.)

302 : Page / Resource Moved Temporarily (translation : this checkout closed. Please use aisle 7.)

404 : Page / resource not found (translation : nope, I don't have one of those. Try something else.)

500 : Server error (translation : Oh dear, I seem to be broken and can't help you right now.)

Wikipedia has the full list of http status codes if you are up late and need something to help you sleep. In general, status codes beginning with '2' means things went OK. Status codes beginning with '3' means the resource has moved somewhere else, and status codes beginning with '4' mean that you can't get the thing you asked for. Status codes beginning with '5' mean that something is wrong with the web server.

Enter the Redirect

The solution, of course, is to redirect all requests for 'myverycoolthing.htm' to 'my-very-cool-thing.htm.' A redirect means that if anyone requests the 'old' URL, they will get forwarded to the 'new' URL. Redirects are nothing new - in fact they are as old as the World Wide Web itself.

The most common redirect you see on websites is called the '302' redirect. 302 refers to the Http status code (see sidebar), and it will temporarily redirect the request to the specified new location (the new location is supplied along with the status code.)

A 302 redirect will ensure that people requesting the Url will get to see the content they expected (points 1 and 2 above). It will also direct search engine robots to the new page and ensure it doesn't get removed (point 3). However, search engine bots will vary in how they treat the weighting of the link (point 4).

It's like when you go away from your house for a while, and get the mail forwarded. Should people update their address books to your new address? Not really, because forwarded mail generally means you'll be back at the original address at some point. A 302 redirect is equivalent to telling the post office to send your mail to a beach house for the holidays, and to stop when you return.

Part of the problem with using a 302 redirect is that it is has been misused by people trying to trick search engines, and it indicates a temporary shift in the URL. So some search engines will update their index to the new URL, others won't, and the end result is not what you are after.

Matt Cutt's blog (Matt works for Google) has an interesting post on the difficulties in interpreting 302 redirects. It's well worth a read for more details on the issue.

A 301 Will Do

A 301 redirect (again, 301 refers to the Http status code) means a permanent redirect, as in 'the resource has permanently moved.' Reverting to the mail metaphor, if you move into a new house, you get the mail redirected to your new location, and at least where I live, the post office takes care of informing your bank, insurance company and government agencies that you have permanently changed your address. A 301 is equivalent to this scenario : we've moved and we're not coming back.

When search engines receive a 301 redirect status code, they know the URL in question has permanently changed, and they will go and investigate and index the new page. They will also assign any link weighting from incoming links over from the old URL to the new URL. This means your page, even if it has completely new content and a new URL, will retain the Google PageRank of your old page. Your page has permanently moved to a new location.

If you search around the Internet long enough, you'll find all sorts of conflicting information about using 301's and search engines. But I'm here to tell you this: it works, and it works well. I've changed the URL on many, many pages on websites, and without exception, it works well.

An Example Using 301 Redirects

I'm always tinkering with my own site, ifinity.com.au. I read my search keyword statistics and make adjustments to URLs and site structure based on what people are actually searching (and finding) the site with.

Originally, I set up a section / subsection in my website called 'What We Do.' I thought this title sounded more personable. But really, I found that people never search for 'what we do.' They search for things like 'products', 'services', 'consultants' and keywords like that. I made the decision to change 'what we do' to 'services.' It's the sort of language that people actually use, and as people speak, so do they search.

The menu structure before the change is shown on the image at the left. Because my site is built with DNN, the URLs are based on the page names, which are also used to generate the menu items. This resulted in a URL of 'What_we_do/Software_Development' for the page.

You can see a screenshot of the Google search results for 'ifinity software development' below. (the fact that Google assumes I mispelled the name - we'll just skip over and cover another day).

The screenshot was taken on May 21, 2008, the day I made the change to the site structure. The relevant URL for the page has been highlighted in red.

The menu structure after the change is shown in the image on the left. The new URL looks like this 'services/software_development/.' It's important to note that I also changed the entire content of the page, rewriting the copy for the page to better reflect what I think people are looking for when they find this page. In terms of search engines, the page is completely different - different URL, different content.

When I changed the page over, I also created a 301 redirect from the old URL 'What_We_Do/Software_Development' to the new page 'Services/Software_Development.' I then monitored search engine bots visiting the new page and whether or not the Google index was properly updated. Within a week, I had my answer from the Google:

This screenshot was taken a week later, for the same search term. As you can see in the red-highlighted area, the page URL was updated, and the page maintained its position in the search results (overall, the site jumped one position, which may or may not be related.) The 301 redirect did its magic, and did so within a week of being issued. Now, you can't rely on 'a week' as the time it takes to get updated. It certainly isn't instantaneous, and it can take much, much longer. There are still some links (a month later) in the index which haven't been updated since my reorganization - these are links which rank low in search results. However, the higher ranked your page, the faster the index will get updated.

Incidentally, you can see my change in the page meta description field, with my 'new' copy intended to encourage more click-throughs from the search results. I'm interested in feedback which seems more 'clickable.'

Checking the Logs

If you're the technical type, like me, you might want to check your website log files to see if the redirect is working as intended. Here is an excerpt from the log files of ifinity.com.au:

 2008-05-22 17:22:25 GET /What_we_do/Software_Development/ - 80 HTTP/1.0 Mozilla/5.0+(compatible;+Yahoo!+Slurp;) - www.ifinity.com.au 301 0 0 473 267 250 2008-05-22 17:22:26 GET /Services/Software_Development/ - 80 HTTP/1.0 Mozilla/5.0+(compatible;+Yahoo!+Slurp;) - www.ifinity.com.au 200 0 0 27433 215 1015

The first line is the Yahoo bot reading the old URL it expects : 'What_We_Do/Software_Development'. It receives the 301 status code (shown after the domain name) and, 1 second later, returns looking for the new Url of 'Services/Software_Development.' This is the page that ultimately gets indexed and kept, and all old references in the search index are updated. You can see the '200' status code returned after the second URL to indicate that all went OK.

Note: I took some detail out of the log lines for simplicity.

301 Redirects as Repair Strategies

We all make mistakes, and I make quite a few with my own website as I often try out new ideas and software before releasing it to anyone else. One of those mistakes in the past was somehow making the IP address available as domain name. This resulted in a complete, duplicate indexing of my site with associated dilution of ranking and all sorts of other dramas. Once I realized this had happened, I need to correct the index by removing the 'wrong' domain name (the IP address.) You can go through removal tools, but there was a chance that someone had linked to my site using the IP-based domain name. And besides, the site was in the index, I might as well try and merge the sites (ifinity.com.au and the IP address) together.

You can see the problem in the Google result on the left. You definitely don't want this to happen to your site, and if it does, you do want to correct it as quickly as possible.

Again, the 301 redirect is the answer. I built a custom tool which intercepted the IP address based domain, and issued a 301 redirect to the equivalent page using the www.ifinity.com.au domain - in effect, telling search engines that the old domain of 202.60.91.201 no longer exists, and to find all that same information at www.ifinity.com.au'.

The results were successful, a short time after putting in the fix, all of the old IP address indexing had been migrated across to the correct domain name. Although it's not without problems as are still a few references to the IP address still floating around in the search indexes. At least the 301 redirect does put the visitor onto the right page if they click on it, though.

Other Popular Uses of 301 Redirects

Now that you have a basic understanding of using 301 redirects to update search engine indexes, it's time to discuss other applications of the 301 redirect. Mostly, these center around creating 'canonical URLs.' A canonical URL is one that is the 'best' URL for a page - or, if you like, a single URL to unite all the different ways pages can be represented. You absolutely want to encourage canonical URLs for your pages, so that each page in your site only has one single representation. For this it's important to think of a 'page' as a unique piece of content, referenced by a unique URL. So, while /products.aspx?productid=45 and /products.aspx?productId=46 refer to the same physical .aspx page, as far as search engines are concerned, they are two different pages of content.

Taking the products.aspx page a step further, perhaps that same page can be access through additional URLs such as : /products/productid/45.aspx or /products/45/my-cool-product.aspx. These might all show the same content, but the problem is that a search engine might index the first, 5 people link to the second one, and 3 other people link to the third version. You've got the potential for three separate pages to show up in the index, and probably one or more of them will show up in 'supplemental results', otherwise known as 'duplicate content.'

In this case, what needs to happen is for a canonical URL to be chosen by you, and all requests for the page end up at the same URL. The end result is that search engines index a single URL, and anyone linking to your content does so through the same URL. That way, all the value from the incoming links is concentrated onto a single page, giving it a much greater chance of ranking success.

Again, Matt Cutts' blog has a very informative post on this topic : SEO Advice Url Canonicalization.

Having a canonical URL means a single URL for each page of content, no exceptions. When I ended up with an IP address for a domain name, it was the absolute opposite of having canonical URLs. Every single page in my site was available as a duplicate URL.

While you may not have this problem with your own site, you may have another, more common problem : www vs no-www. It's really your choice as a web administrator whether you want to advertise your site as domain.com or www.domain.com. Certainly it makes little difference from a search engine point of view, but what you should be doing is redirecting all the 'www' to no-www, or the 'no-www' to 'www' URLs.

You can take this as far as you want - right down to forcing all versions of a URL to be in the same case (Domain.com -> domain.com) and adding/removing forward slashes (domain.com -> domain.com/). Personally I don't bother with this level as it is my belief that search engines are smart enough to know that 'domain.com' and 'Domain.com' are the same thing. Sure, some Web servers allow content to be differentiated by different case URLs, but most of the time websites will give you the same content, regardless of what case it is requested in. But it's up to you as the website owner and person ultimately responsible for search traffic to make sure it functions the way you would like.

301 Redirects and DotNetNuke

How does all this apply to DotNetNuke-based websites you ask? For a start, there isn't any 301 functionality 'baked' into the DNN core framework. But that's OK, because DNN runs on top of IIS, and IIS has plenty of functionality for forwarding and redirecting. For those in a shared hosting environment without direct access to IIS there is the option of installing third-party products to set up custom redirects.

The three biggest problems with DNN URLs and search engine optimization, as I see them, are:

No canonical URL functionality:
The home page is typically available on the site root (/), /default.aspx?tabid=36, /tabid/36/default.aspx, /home/tabid/36/default.aspx, home.aspx and just plain old /default.aspx.
No separation of keywords in the generated Page URLs"
'My Cool Thing' ends up being 'mycoolthing.'
No redirection of deleted or changed pages:
Once you delete a page, it won't forward you on or show any content.

These three issues can all be remedied by using 301 redirects. There are many ways to do this - either by setting up individual redirects in IIS, using a third-party IIS tool for setting up redirects, or using a dedicated DNN 301 module, of which there are multiple available.

Of course, now is the right time to plug my Url Master DNN Url Redirecting and Rewriting module. This DNN module provide a solution to all of the above problems, and many more. It features automatic 301 redirects to enforce canonical URLs, plus the ability to add custom redirects to handle all types of situations where content has been moved or deleted.

Summing Things Up

With any luck, you have learned what a 301 redirect is, and why you should be using them to maintain and increase your position in the search engine results pages. Once you have established yourself in the indexes, it's important you manage your URLs effectively otherwise all your hard work might just be undone.

Do you disagree with anything? Do you have more to add? Submit your thoughts using the comments field below.

DNN 4.8.4 Released

Tom Kraak — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 18:58:00 GMT

Shortly after attending OpenForce Connect Orlando, DNN Corp. released 4.8.4, which fixes 3 low-level security vulnerabilities (DNN 2008-8-L, DNN 2008-9-L, DNN 2008-10-L) that have been reported after the 4.8.3 release. Other news next.

Half of the OF Connect Orlando speakers have made their session material available for download on orlando.dotnetnukeug.net. Event photos by Will Strohl have been posted as well. I don’t see anything on OpenForce08.com yet.
Brisinger Group, Inc. released SCORM LMS Portal Online Training Edition, “a fully DNN integrated SCORM compliant online training system.” Demo here.
Dave Bush has written a number of DNN-related blog posts and tutorials on his site at blog.dmbcllc.com. Go check’em out and leave comments as every blogger appreciates that.
Shaun Walker blogs about DNN trademarks in a two-part series (post 1 here and post 2 here.)
Team lead Antonio Chagoury sheds light on upcoming Blog module features including social bookmarks, SEO improvements, and gravatars in a three-part series of blog posts.
Skinner and blogger Cuong Dang offers advice on how to buy a commercial DNN skin. A well compiled list.
And finally, Bruce Chapman elaborates on 3 important on-page SEO factors (page title, description and URL) and how they impact click-through rates from search engine result pages.

Did I miss something or got something wrong? Comments are always appreciated.

Live Blogging from OpenForce Connect Orlando

Tom Kraak — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 12:33:00 GMT

Welcome to a day of live blogging from OpenForce Connect Orlando. After a few days of family fun in Cocoa Beach, I’ve made my way to the Orange County Convention Center. Of course, I parked just outside the North Building and learned shortly thereafter that the event is held in the South Building in room S210E. I never mind a walk though, except when I’m wearing a shirt and jacket and it’s over 80 degrees at 8:00 am … welcome to Florida!

It’s about 8:30 am now and people are making their way into the room. The first session is scheduled to kick off at 9:00.

Shortly after 9:00 am, Brian Scarbeau, founder of the Orlando DNN user group, greets a good-size crowd and sets the stage for the day by quickly reviewing how this first OpenForce Connect event came about. Then Brian continues in a well articulated way to provide an overview of the DotNetNuke web application framework and shows how to get a local install up and running based on the DNN starter kit. He goes on to point out blogs, tutorials, and other resources (including Vasilis' site) to help newcomers ease their way into the world of DotNetNuke.

At 10:00 am, Will Strohl, lead developer of RezHub.com, takes the stage for his presentation on DNN Skinning Tips and Tricks. He starts off with a high-level overview of the DNN skinning engine including fundamental concepts such as skin tokens, panes, and skin packaging. In between bombarding the audience with RezHub swag, Will outlines techniques to make panes collapsible, sheds light on taking advantage of about.htm as part of the skin package and tries hard not to get drawn into the heated debate of HTML table-based layouts versus CSS-based skin layouts.

Next up is Raul Rodila of Arrow Consulting who talks about understanding and using settings in custom modules. As this was a very developer-focused talk, I’ve turned most if my attention to writing up the morning sessions. Check back later in the week for links to all sessions and downloads.

Tracy Wittenkeller of T-WORX, Inc kicks off the afternoon with his session on building websites with DotNetNuke. Tracy sets the tone of the talk by asserting that the “core modules” included with DNN provide a powerful set of tools that is often overlooked. He proves his point by walking through the most important settings and configurations of the Announcements, Links, Media, and Surveys modules highlighting the power of layout templates along the way.

With his session on securing the DNN connection string, Darrell Hardy of Hardy Consulting, rounds out a day of local speakers. He stresses the importance of hardening your DNN installs by following general security guidelines such as using strong passwords and installing only trustworthy modules. Then Darrell goes deeper into various methods of encrypting and decrypting the DNN connection strings in the web.config file. This was an eye-opening session for me and I strongly encourage you to download Darrell’s slides and code as soon as available.

The last session of the day is presented by Nik Kalyani, co-founder and CEO of DotNetNuke Corporation and Microsoft MVP. Nik gives a preview of the enhancements to the DNN skinning engine to be released with Cambrian (DNN 5.0.) According to Nik, the overall goal of these new features has been to let the designer be a designer instead of having to grow into “half-programmers” just to be able to skin and style DotNetNuke. Most interesting to me is the introduction of layout and “super” stylesheets to guide skin developers on their way to a more CSS-based approach to skinning.

And finally, Shaun Walker, Nik Kalyani, Joe Brinkman, and Scott Willhite, all founding members of DotNetNuke Corporation, took the stage for an open panel discussion on the past and future of the DNN web application framework. The guys revisited the major goals (social networking, dynamic content localization, workflow and versioning, and skinning enhancements) for Cambrian set forth at last year’s OpenForce conference in Las Vegas and updated the audience on the current status of these new features and enhancements as well as the overall development status of the upcoming release. The team has worked through 5 betas and is currently “pretty much” in feature lockdown mode. The first iteration of Cambrian will include the above mentioned skinning enhancements as well as an installer roll-back feature and the decoupling of admin and host pages and modules among other enhancements. These new features will form the base necessary for the more “involved” goals of taking on social networking, dynamic content localization, and workflow and versioning.

The inaugural OpenForce Connect conference in Orlando set a high standard for similar events to come. Thanks again to Microsoft’s Joe Healy for spearheading the event and providing the facilities. Further appreciation goes to the entire team of the Orlando DNN user group for their organizational talent and attention to detail. Thanks again also to my fellow sponsors who made this event possible … see you all no later than November in Vegas!

Orlando Bound

Tom Kraak — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 18:54:00 GMT

The inaugural OpenForce Connect event is upon us. On Sunday, June 8, roughly 200 DNN enthusiast and community leaders will converge on the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, FL for a day of talks, networking and giveaways. Whether you just discovered DotNetNuke or call yourself a veteran, don’t miss this opportunity to mingle with fellow DNN fans.

Let’s see what else is new:

Active Modules, Inc. announced the acquisition of the social networking module suite MyProfile and MyMessages from DNNFusion. It will be interesting to see how Will Morgenweck and his team will tackle the integration of the two modules with their existing product line.
Ingen Systems continues their free weekly webcasts with an introduction to Telerik's RadMenu, TabStrip, and PanelBar. Learn how to utilize these menu controls within the DNN environment for the sake of SEO and clean and compliant (X)HTML and JavaScript.
In a recent blog post Michael Washington indirectly refers to a little known enhancement to the DNN upgrade process also known as XmlMerge. Starting with version 4.6.2, DNN handles updates to the web.config file automatically. Find out more about this feature from Charles Nurse and Mitchel Sellers.

That’s it for this week folks as I’m heading out the door towards the Sunshine State. Hope to see you there!

Security Scare Prompts Release of DNN 4.8.3

Tom Kraak — Sun, 25 May 2008 18:36:00 GMT

It’s been an interesting week to say the least. A week in which “always glad to help” took on a whole new meaning. I deliberately won’t go into further details about the security scare that rocked the DNN community in the last few days as you’ve probably wasted too much time and popcorn on it already. The bottom line is that there is no need to lose sleep over the issue from now until DNN 4.8.3 is scheduled to be released early next week. Let’s see if we actually got some work done besides dealing with greed and deceit:

Mitchel Sellers was finally promoted to Team Lead on the Documents project. I can’t think of a better developer to drive the module forward. Congrats Mitch!
Bruce Chapman highlights 7 Features DotNetNuke developers must implement in their DotNetNuke Modules to be considered search engine optimized. Bruce is slowly but surely becoming the “must go to” authority when it comes to SEO friendly DNN module development and there is nobody that appreciates his efforts more than I do.
Phil Haack is back on .NET Rocks! As a newly appointed Microsoft employee, Phil talks about his role as a manager of the ASP.NET Model View Controller project and hints on MVC features such as “hackable” URLs and more control over the (X)HTML emitted by ASP.NET. That’s music in the ears of SEOs working on Microsoft’s web platform. Phil also mentioned that a new release of Subtext is indeed imminent.
Out of the box, DNN currently provides only minimal support for multi-language websites, but that does not mean it can’t be done. Here is a comprehensive guide for building DNN multi-lingual portals that you don’t want to miss. Well done DV!

As with any software product, this wasn’t DNN’s first security vulnerability and it won’t be its last. However, the DotNetNuke Security Task Force years ago outlined policies and guidelines that clearly address how to deal with security related bugs. Let’s stick to them!

DNN SSL: Securing the Login, Register, Admin and Host Pages

Tom Kraak — Thu, 22 May 2008 04:37:00 GMT

I am trying to SSL enable the Login, Register, Admin and Host pages, however, I see no way to do that in DotNetNuke. I am using version 4.8.2, and when I go to the pages section under admin I see no Register, Login or admin/host pages listed there.
So this begs the question, how do you mark the Secure Login checkbox on those pages when they aren't visible in the pages listing?

The other day I came across the above question on the dotnetnuke.com forum and it felt like a good opportunity to revisit the topic as its been well over a year since I first blogged about it.

Most of you are probably aware of the fact that native SSL support made its way into DNN with version 4.5.4. And right around that time John Mitchell published a short and sweet tutorial that shows you how to take advantage of the DNN’s new SSL capabilities and I urge you to first digest John’s post before following along here.

As you may have noticed, John’s walkthrough doesn’t directly address the common scenario of securing the DNN Login, Register, Admin, and Host pages, which is not as simple as you might expect. To SSL secure the Login and Register pages follow these steps:

Create “custom” Login and Register pages by adding 2 new pages to your website.
Drop the Account Login module onto your new Login page and drop the User Account module onto your new Register page.
Then tell DNN about your newly created Login and Register pages by pointing to them via Admin > Site Settings > Advanced Settings > Page Management.
Finally, mark the 2 pages as “Secure” via Page Settings > Advanced Settings > Other Settings > Secure as described in John’s tutorial.

Again, not as straightforward as it should be, but it certainly works.

What about the Admin and Host pages you say? Well, that’s a totally different dilemma, which I have not figured out yet - short of “hacking” the Tabs database table directly. And even that I have not tested yet, but I don’t see why it wouldn’t work. What certainly works is a 3rd party component that I’ve come to rely on (food for another blog post.)

With that said, does DNN support SLL natively? It sure does, but as with many initial attempts, it’s a little rough around the edges. What I would like to see in Cambrian (also known as DNN 5) is 3 additional checkboxes under Admin > Site Settings > Advanced Settings > SSL Settings to secure the Login, Register, and Admin pages. Will that work or does it spell trouble for multi-portal installations? What about the Host pages? Suggestions anyone?

Building Relationships

Tom Kraak — Tue, 20 May 2008 19:48:00 GMT

Sustainable fashion designer Zoica Miesen recently wrote in to show her appreciation for a job well done ... thanks Zoica!

Almost a year ago I looked into running an ecommerce site on DotNetNuke, but it quickly turned into a daunting task. While DNN specialists were fairly easy to find, their limited competencies were fast revealed.
I was about to give up and forgo DNN altogether when Seablick Consulting crossed my path, and from talking with Tom, I instinctively knew that I would hire his company for my immediate and future DNN consulting needs. Tom kept and open communication channel throughout the entire process of designing and developing an ecommerce enabled website and traveled numerous “extra miles” to understand my business, its vision and goals. From DNN and ecommerce consulting and training to web hosting and search engine optimization, Seablick Consulting lend a hand in all areas of my online venture.
Far and beyond realizing a project, Seablick Consulting proved to me that building long term relationships is still a reachable goal. I look forward to working with Tom and his team for many years to come.
Zoica Miesen
Owner
Zoica Matei, Corp.
zoicamatei.com

Fresh New Skin

Tom Kraak — Tue, 20 May 2008 02:19:00 GMT

Vasilis surprised me with a new skin this morning! When I started blogging seriously a year and a half ago, he took it upon himself to “refresh” seablick.com every 6 months or so and that’s just what he has done.

This latest effort focuses mainly on accessibility improvements, but since nothing much goes on around here without SEO in mind, the bot food has been spiced up as well. Vasilis is inundated with work at the moment, but hopefully I’ll get him to give up some of his “skinning secrets” in an upcoming blog post. Now onto this week’s news.

Cuong Dang collects a list of DNN skinning resources for beginners and gives his pros and cons on each. If you know of a resource that is worth listing, leave Cuong a comment.
Mitchel Sellers continues his saga of DNN installation and upgrade tutorials with a new chapter on migrating DotNetNuke from development to remote production. A faq well answered.
Ernst Peter Tamminga keeps us abreast of the long awaited update to the core Events module, but needs your help with beta testing.
I just stumbled apon a well-written (mostly) DNN blog in German maintained by Daniel Müller. There is no better reason to give your high school-German another shot, right?
SEO for developers was a recent topic here on my blog. Now there is a great SEO guide for designers as well.

That wraps it up for this week. Thanks again to Vasilis of thinkofdesign.com for developing a fresh new look for this blog and thanks to you, IE6, Safari, and Opera users, for reporting anything out of whack :)-

Minimize Duplicate Content by Avoiding DNN's LinkClick.aspx

Tom Kraak — Wed, 14 May 2008 20:14:00 GMT

Almost a year ago in my DNN SEO quick start guide I talked about minimizing duplicate content by crafting “well-formed internal links” and over the last few months many of you wrote in to ask what exactly I meant by that.

We’ll get to the bottom of the issue in a moment, but first let’s refresh the idea of “duplicate content” again. Ideally, every URL of your website should correspond to exactly one unique page within your website. And that’s generally how it worked back in the day when most sites were made up of static HTML pages. That all changed though as larger sites started moving their content into databases and pages were assembled “on the fly.” And as ecommerce and content management systems gained in popularity, multiple URLs leading to the same page became quite common. That in turn did not sit well with Google and other search engines as it undermines the quality of web search results, which sparked rumors of search engines coming down on webmasters with “duplicate content penalties.”

Today, according to Google, there is no need to lose sleep over duplicate content as long as you try to minimize it by reasonable means. One way of doing so is to pay attention to the internal links you create within DotNetNuke. Our number one enemy here is the DNN URL control (also known as LinkClick.aspx), which facilitates link building in modules such Announcements, Links, Text/HTML and others.

As you can see in the above screenshots, when you go through the steps of creating a link the “point and click” way in the FCKeditor, you’ll end up with an anchor tag that looks like this:

Technically this link obviously works, meaning it will take your visitor to the intended page on your site. However, you’ve just produced a piece of duplicated content in the eyes if search engines as you’ve now 2 URLs leading to one and the same page. Furthermore, and maybe more importantly, you are wasting “link juice” or “votes” for the page you are linking to by referencing it via multiple URLs. Here is what the anchor tag should look like instead:

As a general rule, follow the URL structure as laid out in your main menu. If you have to rely on creating links via FCK’s Insert/Edit Link button, then typing or pasting the URL from the browser address bar is your only option:

And if you think that switching to a different WYSIWYG editor will solve the problem, think again. Telerik’s editor, for instance, creates URLs such as this one when picking from the Custom Links dropdown:

Hardly any better.

The very same problem arises when using the Links and the Announcements module with link counter turned on:

Simply unchecking “Track Number of Times this Link is Clicked?” takes care of the issue here. I like to argue that link tracking is better handled by your web analytics provider instead of DNN itself.

Starting with version 4, DotNetNuke has considerably cut down on duplicate content issues, but the dreaded LinkClick.aspx is still with us to this day. Fortunately, a heightened awareness of what’s going on behind the UI and a basic understanding of what constitutes a well-formed link is all it takes to minimize duplicated content and maximize link equity when linking between pages in DNN.

As always, I’d like to hear from you. Do you consider LinkClick.aspx your friend or foe? What other duplicate content issues have you run into in your daily DotNetNuke adventures?

DNN Friday is Back

Tom Kraak — Fri, 09 May 2008 23:03:00 GMT

Due to popular demand, our weekly DNN news roundup is back after a 5 month hiatus. There was never a particular reason for DNN Friday's disappearance, it just fell by the wayside as there are only 24 hours in a day ... even on Fridays. Without further mumbling, here is the latest from the "dnnsphere."

As mentioned last week, OpenForce Connect Orlando is near and we are happy to announce our support of the event as a Gold Sponsor. If you are running a DNN shop, please consider to do the same. Either way, I hope to see down in Orlando in a couple of weeks.

Shaun Walker got stuck in Word this week and put out 3 excellent blog posts in short succession. He talks about the upcoming skinning enhancements in DNN 5; he expresses his discontent with Microsoft in regards to the lack of support for .NET open source projects, and he puts his sales suit on to shed some much needed light on the DNN support program offered by DotNetNuke Corporation. All good reads.

9d released an interesting add-on for Ultra Video Gallery. I’ll have to get Jeff to take a closer look at it.

Scott Stokes of Adverageous released Daily Schedule 1.0, a “daily schedule module” for DNN 4.5 and up. You can demo it here. Wasn’t there a similar sounding DNN module development house back in the DNN 2/3 days known for calendar type modules? Is this the same guy / company or am I thinking about somebody else?

Effority.Net, a group of DNN developers and enthusiasts based in Germany, moves its free User Directory Module to CodePlex. I’ve recently tried it out on a cycling club site that I run and it works great.

Mitchel Sellers discusses modules, compatibility, and developer responsibility and shows that one line in the .dnn file is all it takes for a smoother relationship between module and DNN.

iFinity Url Master has been out for a couple of weeks now, but I still have to mention it here as it has had a big impact on my daily DNN SEO work. Check back for a detailed review of the module by the end of next week.

DNN OpenForce Connect Announced

Tom Kraak — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 20:54:00 GMT

Earlier today, DotNetNuke Corporation announced OpenForce Connect, a planned series of one-day “mini conferences” organized and hosted by local DNN user groups.

First up is OpenForce Connect Orlando scheduled for Sunday, June 8th, 2008 at the Orange County Convention Center. This inaugural event was inspired by Microsoft’s Joe Healy and is organized by the Orlando DotNetNuke user group under the direction of Michael Webb. Expect a full day of nothing but DNN in the form of 7 sessions presented by local DNN evangelists and a closing panel discussion by the co-founders of DotNetNuke Corporation. While the event is free to attend, registration is required at OpenForce08.com.

I’m planning to take the Family down to the Sunshine State for a long weekend and hope to see you there!

Search Engine Optimization with ASP.NET Review

Tom Kraak — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 19:54:00 GMT

The DNN module developers and web application programmers that I work with can usually be categorized as follows: SEO unaware, SEO aware, and SEO proficient. Unfortunately and traditionally, the vast majority of them fall into the first two categories, meaning it either never or only rarely crosses their minds that their multi-page modules will be scrutinized by Google and company just like any other web page.

Now Professional Search Engine Optimization with ASP.NET: A Developer's Guide to SEO by Cristian Darie and Jaimie Sirovich aims to change all that. This is the first book on search engine optimization that I’ve come across that “delves at all into the meaty technical details” of SEO and therefore speaks to developers as opposed to only marketers. But then again, SEO is a team effort and I believe tech-minded marketers will appreciate the book as well even without the need to fully grasp every code snippet or regular expression. The exposure to the technical side of SEO helps me as a marketer to effectively communicate with technical folks. Sounds like a “win win” for everyone.

The book starts off with “a primer in basic SEO” for web developers and touches on fundamental concepts such as link equity, Google Page Rank, usability and accessibility. The introduction also looks at search engine ranking factors and distinguishes between visible on-page factors, invisible on-page factors, time-based factors, and external or off-page factors. Search engine penalties such as Google’s supplemental index and duplicate content are also discussed. The intro closes with a listing of resources and tools including web analytics, market research, browser plugins as well as SEO forums and blogs. Concise and to the point – pretty much all developers need to know to start their journey into the uncharted waters of SEO.

Then the book spends 2 chapters on a favorite topic of mine: search engine-friendly URLs and content relocation, also known as 301 and 302 redirection. If you have full control over your web server, you will appreciate the numerous code samples for ISAPI_Rewrite. If you are “stuck” on a shared hosting environment without access to ISAPI filters, the coverage of URL rewriting with UrlRewriter.NET comes to the rescue. The main lesson that I’ve learned from these 2 chapters though is that no matter what method you deploy for URL rewriting, you won’t go very far without at least basic knowledge of regular expressions. No need to worry though as the book does a nice job of “regex hand-holding” whenever applicable and even provides an appendix teaching simple regular expressions. For seasoned ASP.NET developers this won’t be an issue anyway as regular expression are commonly used for string matching and parsing chores besides URL rewriting.

Next up is fairly detailed discussion of duplicate content, which is a common dilemma for database-driven web applications such as DotNetNuke. The authors touch on causes and effects of duplicate content and discuss utilizing the robots meta tag as well as robots.txt pattern exclusion. More interestingly, a code sample and walkthrough is provided for generating robots.txt files programmatically. That way, for instance, all DNN printer-friendly pages could be disallowed “automatically” and on-the-fly!

The remainder of the book devotes chapters to search engine-friendly HTML and JavaScript, web feeds and social bookmarking, sitemaps, link bait, and foreign language SEO among others. A basic case study on “building an e-commerce store” summarizes the main concepts covered in the book and offers a feel for how these SEO-related principles may be applied in the real world.

Without going into further detail, I wholeheartly recommend the book to any ASP.NET programmer and selfishly to any DotNetNuke module developer. I do realize that the more technically folks may never look at SEO as religiously as I do, but that’s not the point. The ultimate goal in my mind is to unite our efforts behind building websites and web applications that perform on the server as well as on the client.

Oh, and in the unlikely event that you are a PHP developer reading a DNN blog, the same author team also published a PHP version of the book.

I have a number of DNN developers on my “blog to email” list and I’d love to get their input. Do you consider SEO at all during module development? If so, what challenges do you face by doing so?

OpenForce 08 is Calling All Speakers

Tom Kraak — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 16:54:00 GMT

Today was originally marked as the deadline for for submitting speaker session proposals for DotNetNuke OpenForce 2008 to be held November 10 to 14 in Las Vegas, but I just got word from DNN Corporation, that "due to some issues with the original session submission forms we have decided to extend the call for speaker's submission date." You now have an additional week, more specifically until 5 pm PST on Friday April 25 to submit your proposals.

I had a chance to talk to Joe Brinkman of DNN Corporation last week and he confirmed that excitement for the 2nd annual DNN conference is building. He also mentioned that a passion for DNN and a desire to share that passion are traits that he personally is looking for in a speaker.

I've submitted 4 sessions so far with DNN SEO at the top of my list followed by sessions on DotNetNuke & Ecommerce, Productivity Features & Techniques, and a business-focused session on "How to Attract and Service the SMB Market." If you have ideas or suggestions for topics that you would like to see covered at OpenForce 2008, I would love to hear about them ... let me know in the comments below.

Customizing FCKeditor Toolbars

Heidi Waters — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 14:36:00 GMT

FCKeditor has been the default rich-text editor for DotNetNuke for quite a while now. I find it mostly intuitive and easy-to-use right out of the box. It provides more functionality than most website administrators will ever need and behaves much like any familiar Microsoft office application. There are times, however, when you’ll want to trim back some of that capability to avoid confusing your website users.

For example, we use Active Forums on liftkettlebells.com. We intended to give our users some limited text formatting ability, but the default FCKeditor includes a whopping 48 toolbar buttons! Frankly, it looks too busy and no one uses all those buttons when drafting a forum post. We just wanted to offer our visitors a few obvious options to pretty up their posts: bold, italics, bullets, lists, and hyperlinks.

One approach is to make modifications to your toolbars in the fckconfig.js file located in \Providers\HtmlEditorProviders\Fck\Custom, but those changes are then applied globally. I suggest using this method if you want to add/delete single buttons on the toolbars themselves. Let’s save those details for a future blog post.

For now, let’s focus on "hiding" toolbars using the FCKeditor's custom options page. If you are logged in as a host or admin, you will see a Show Custom Editor Options link below the compose window of any FCKeditor instance.

In Active Forums, for example, pick any forum and click the Add New Topic button. Then click Show Custom Editor Options.

Notice the three Settings Type options: Instance, Module, and Portal. These options are meant to confine your custom settings to a single instance of FCKeditor, to every instance within the current module, or portal-wide to every module and instance on your website. Unfortunately, it often doesn’t quite work that way. You may need to experiment with your selection to get the intended results. In this case, I’ve found that Instance modifications actually push my changes out across the entire Active Forums module. A little counter-intuitive to say the least!

Select Editor Toolbar View Options to view your toolbar choices. This is where you "turn off" unwanted toolbars. Select the pencil icon to expand the selected toolbar. For example, DNNDefault. Note, you may need to scroll back down to the Editor toolbar view options section after clicking the pencil icon.

You can disable the toolbar for all users, or a selected subset of users based on role. For our forum, I checked Disabled for All Users. Attention, you must click on the check mark image to the left of the row for your changes to take affect. This is another quirky little detail that took me a few hours to figure out!

You will need to repeat these steps for each toolbar you want to disable. So, I also disabled the Default and NoGallery toolbars. That leaves only the desired Basic toolbar visible to our users.

Once you have disabled the unwanted toolbars, click Apply in the Apply Custom Settings To section with Instance selected in the dropdown box. You should then see a “Settings applied successfully to Instance” message as shown below.

Now close the dialog box. To see your changes, don’t forget to click Refresh Editor at the bottom of the compose window.

And that’s it! These changes are only applicable to Active Forums. So, when I’m editing content using any other modules, I still have access to the full suite of toolbars. But, my forum members get to see a simpler, smaller set of formatting choices:

We would love to hear from you. What have you learned while customizing the FCKeditor for your needs? Please share in the comments below.

Engage in DNN Training

Jenny Hilliard — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 19:35:00 GMT

Engage Software was recently named DotNetNuke Corporation's official DNN training partner. Late last year I had inquired about DNN classes and when the opportunity finally came up, I was very excited to participate.

The training facility in downtown St. Louis, Missouri was easy to reach. Furthermore, the atmosphere was very comfortable and the material and equipment provided for student use was up to date and well organized. Instructors Chris Hammond and Cuong Dang were extremely knowledgeable and presented the material in an easy to follow manner.

I was only able to attend the DNN and Skinning Essentials, so I cannot comment on module development and other classes offered.

DotNetNuke Essentials was presented by Chris Hammond. I really didn’t think it would be possible to do a complete overview of DNN in 8 hours, but Chris managed to do just that. We covered DNN’s history, the installation process, possible applications, available modules, and had very good Q & A sessions as well. With so much information presented, I feared to get overwhelmed quickly, but that never materialized as Chris went over the topics in an easy to follow manner. The session was attended by a variety of people with different backgrounds, which made for some interesting questions. The day really energized me to do more with DNN and generated a lot more questions. It also opened up new possibilities for utilizing DNN in our organization.

The Skinning Essentials class was also well attended by a variety of individuals. Instruction was directed by Cuong Dang. He was an excellent presenter with a quick paced style – at times too quick for my lack of HTML knowledge. But Cuong worked with me got me up to speed and was very nice about it. We went through the procedures associated with creating a skin and necessary file structures. He also covered layouts, adding tokens and controls, editors to use to create skin files, and how it all fits together to create the final skin. We also touched on skin installation and configuration. Each section was followed by hands on exercises, which did require at least a working knowledge of HTML. Then we stepped through acsx files and also looked at the various CSS files and their order of precedence. We went on to cover containers and learned how they are very similar to skins in the creation process.

Overall, I definitely recommend Engage lead DNN training for those who want to take their DotNetNuke-based websites beyond the mere fundamentals. Since I am a DNN novice and have only delved into the basics so far, I found the sessions well worth my time. The classes helped me gain a better understanding of DotNetNuke and inspired me to learn more.

Jennifer Hilliard has been with working for Fluidraulics, Inc for over 20 years in a wide variety of roles. Her primary duties include IT management and various administrative functions for 2 offices. She started the company website 10+years ago with no experience in web development or design. The site has steadily grown ever since and Jennifer’s current goals include expansion into ecommerce and back-office integration. Jennifer is married and has 2 young teenagers who enjoy the “outdoorsy” lifestyle of rural northwestern Pennsylvania. Two loveable basset hounds round out the family.

Introducing Guest Blogger Heidi Waters

Tom Kraak — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 20:48:00 GMT

I’m pleased to announce the addition of Heidi Waters to the Seablick Consulting family of DNN enthusiasts and bloggers.

Heidi earned an Industrial Engineering degree from the University of Rhode Island in 1994. She first applied these studies with the Boothroyd Dewhurst software company. After graduation, she moved into the automotive world as an Industrial Engineer at General Motor’s Detroit Tech Center and Spring Hill, Tennessee Saturn plant.

Along the way, Heidi shifted her focus to supporting the IT needs of design and manufacturing customers. Later, she moved completely into business development with EDS to support large scale IT sales and implementations in the government, manufacturing, and financial sectors.

During her 15 years in the IT world, Heidi became proficient in a dozen programming, web development, and database systems. As a relative newcomer to DNN, Heidi looks forward to contributing short DNN tutorials covering beginner level administration, CSS, and XHML as she masters this new platform.

Welcome!

IndooGrid 2.0 Review

Mary Veranis — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 00:15:00 GMT

For the past month or so, I’ve been working on a project that is data management and reporting in nature. Targeting a DNN-based solution, but not being familiar with all the various modules that are on the market today, I really wasn’t sure which direction to go; purchase a module or write one myself. As I searched, I stumbled upon the IndooGrid from IndooLab in a weekly Snowcovered email newsletter.

What is IndooGrid?

IndooGrid can be used in a wide variety of ways: everything from reporting to data management, photo galleries, forms, and questionnaires, just to name a few. Pulling from your database of choice, the module displays data and allows editing according to your specifications. Here are some of the main options:

in-line editing
data import and export
properties on individual columns such as read-only, visible, format, and custom validations on edit fields
join database tables for dropdown lists
execute script on insert, update, and page load
create tables or views from within the grid or use existing tables and views
hyperlink ability from within the grid to another page or grid
customizable sorting, paging, filtering, and record counts
support of remote connection strings

The above list is far from complete as this module has too many features and options spell out here. A main advantage of IndooGrid is that no stored procedures need to be written as they are built right into the grid.

Installing IndooGrid

This module installs as most other DNN modules via Host > Module Definitions > Install New Module. What’s great about Indoogrid is that you can download a free trial version, which works locally without restrictions. I downloaded the trial, tested the module and participated in the IndooLab forum all before making a purchase decision. Once you are ready to use the module on a “live” site, you simply purchase via a mouse-click and receive a license key.

Documentation

A 157-page manual comes with the module and is also available as a separate pre-purchase download. The manual provides detailed directions for specific tasks. On a down-note, the IndooGrid documentation assumes at least some basic understanding and knowledge of relational databases, HTML and CSS. I come from a SQL/ASP.NET programming background and had no problems with tables, views, joins, and “pulling” the data out the way I wanted, but I had trouble with “little things” in regards to HTML or CSS-related changes. The more you know about these subjects, the easier IndooGrid will be to implement. To balance that statement, if you are setting up a module of this nature, then knowledge of relational databases and HTML and CSS is a certain prerequisite.

Support

Up until recently, support has been a dream and I’ve been receiving answers in the forum within 24 hours. During the past few weeks however, IndooGrid went through some major re-vamping and support has temporarily slowed. Even during this time though, IndooLab kept an open communication channel, which I appreciate very much. Primoz, one of the folks at IndooLab, strikes me as extremely professional in every way. I would also like to note that since my module purchase, I have requested a few additional features, which have all been accounted for in the 2.00.26 release.

Wrap Up

All in all, it’s been a very pleasant experience with IndooGrid and the folks at IndooLab. I highly recommend you take a look at the demos and download the fully functional trial version for further evaluation and testing.

Have you used IndooGrid or other "grid-style" modules? If so, please share in the comments below.

DNN as a Search Engine Friendly CMS

Tom Kraak — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 20:23:00 GMT

SEOmoz mastermind Rand Fishkin recently voiced his opinion on "choosing the right CMS platform for your Website from an SEO perspective" and sparked a healthy discussion mostly driven by people familiar with PHP-based frameworks and content management systems.

The big question that comes to mind for us obviously is how DNN stacks up when it comes to features and capabilities in support of SEO. So let's look at the "12 basic SEO issues that frequently plague content management systems" according to Rand Fishkin.

Title Tag Customization & Rules
DotNetNuke makes it straightforward and easy to specify title tags on a "page-specific level" as long as the page is a traditional DNN page, meaning it's listed under Admin > Pages. Beyond that, things get a little more dicey as the responsibility shifts to the module that's driving the page. Multi-page modules such as Ventrian's News Articles provide some control over page titles while others such as Active Module's Active Forum allow no control over title tags at all.

Static, Keyword-Rich URLs
Even though DNN now features "human friendly" URLs, that's not nearly enough. Basic requirements such as hyphen separated words are still not met out of the box let alone custom URL creation. Luckily, the community has stepped up in the form of custom URL rewriting providers.

Meta Tag Customization
Along the lines of the title tag, DNN won't make you sweat over meta description tags or robots tags for conventional DNN pages, but I've only come a across very few modules that allow you to control descriptions and other meta tags in their page hierarchies. Bottom line, choose your modules wisely or build your own.

Enabling Custom HTML Tags
This is a no-brainer, as it's fairly safe to say that all DNN rich-text editors in use today allow manual editing of HTML simply by switching into "Source" view. You may even go a step further by customizing a variety of drop-down boxes found on editor toolbars.

Internal Anchor Text Flexibility
You are safe with DNN on this one as well, as there are a plethora of ways to optimize internal linking. Everything from the rich-text editor just mentioned to the good old, very flexible Links module comes to mind (just stay away from link tracking and logging.)

Intelligent Categorization Structure
While fairly limited out of the DNN box, "customizable navigation panels" as Rand calls them, are well covered by component vendors such as Telerik who've turned their navigational controls into DNN providers. DNN module developers such Snapsis Software and others have stepped up as well to offer flexible menu and navigation systems.

Pagination Controls
DNN does not concern itself with pagination controls as all content is managed by modules. So again, take SEO into account when researching modules. For instance, while I consider News Articles templates to be the module's best feature, there is currently no easy way to nofollow the pagination links.

301-Redirect Functionality
You are on your own when it comes to redirects as there is currently nothing build into the DNN core to manage content redirection. I've come across modules that claim to handle proper redirection, but I have not tested any of them. Instead, I prefer the approaches described here. However you implement your redirects, make sure to test for the 301 http status code.

XML/RSS Pinging
While most modules these days (including the "core modules") provide some form of content syndication, "accurate pinging" is not as widely supported. In fact, I've only seen it in commercial modules, but then again, I have not investigated much in the is area. Please educate me on this topic.

Image-Handling & Alt Tags
Alt tags are handled well by the rich-text editor. If you use other, more elaborate modules or components to manage images or image galleries, make sure alt tags have been considered during module or component design.

CSS Exceptions
Most DNN rich-text editors easily allow for "manual exceptions" to the styles defined in skin.css or any other style sheet. This is definitely a boon to educated users and content editors, but in my experience, most average users are not aware of "proper semantic markup" nor do they care.

Static Caching Options
With the 4.0 release, DNN has been optimized for performance and we now have multi-level caching as well as compression to our disposal. However, "extraneous database connections" are still a concern, especially when using features such as the DNN Site Log, which in my eyes is much better handled by 3rd party analytics providers.

Considering that there is still no member on the DNN core team dedicated to SEO, I think the framework fares fairly well. I hope Cambrian will further address XHTML compliance as well as URL rewriting and content redirection. Everything beyond that is pretty much the responsibility of modules.

What do you think? Do you consider DNN a SEO-friendly CMS? Please share in the comments below.

Ultra Video Gallery Review Part 2

Jeff Waters — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 02:36:00 GMT

This is part 2 of my Ultra Video Gallery review. If you missed part 1, you can catch up on it here. To recap, UVG is an extremely well written, intelligently crafted module suite for presenting video content within DotNetNuke. It offers nearly every online video feature seen on sites like YouTube and will help you quickly add an interactive, modern, social element to your DNN website with very little effort.

Ultra Video Gallery as a Business

If you haven’t included video content on your site, you are missing an element that has come to be expected by your visiting public. UVG offers an easy way for you to integrate a couple dozen or a couple thousand videos. The question that you’ll ultimately ask is “What videos should I include, and for what purpose?”

I’m sure many developers have had an initial “Hey, I can build my own YouTube now!” reaction to UVG. While that may be true, a site open to all categories of videos is almost sure to fail. YouTube is the 400 pound gorilla in the general video search game. You aren’t going to beat it head on. I think the real opportunity here is for DNN site owners to quickly and inexpensively craft a niche portal filled with multiple forms of multimedia devoted to a single, refined topic.

YouTube features a plethora of videos covering every topic imaginable. The problem is finding the best content on a specific subject. Yes, you can search and surf related videos. And yes, there are ratings that can help guide you. But, let’s get real … you will have to sift through a lot of garbage to uncover the diamonds.

If you wanted to try Catfish Noodling, you could certainly search YouTube and find some interesting videos. However, I contend that a website totally devoted to the art of grabbing fish with your bare hands offers a far more compelling visitor experience. You won’t get millions of hands typing in your website address, but you are likely to get thousands that will actually follow through and reach for a wallet. Now throw in a little quality control on the videos, editorial comments, additional text content, a community discussion forum, and targeted advertising. Then go find the next extremely tiny niche activity that captures your passion and repeat! The opportunities are endless.

The Legal Issues

Now that you’ve decide to craft the world’s foremost online community devoted to Pig Racing, it’s time to collect the best online video content in one place. Here’s where your ethics can get a little muddy.

You can easily search YouTube for a hundreds of videos in this niche. You’ll want to do some quality control and only pick the best of the best to feature on your site. With UVG, you don’t even have to upload these videos onto your own hosting account. You can simply enter the YouTube video URL and UVG will automatically play the video on your website just like the videos that you do own and host.

Wow … sounds great! I thought so too, at first. But when I dug a little deeper, I realized that UVG is pointing directly to the underlying Flash video file hosted on YouTube’s servers while completely bypassing the actual YouTube video player wrapper. That means none of YouTube’s advertising overlays will show up on these videos. Also, the all important YouTube “view count” won’t increase for videos played on your UVG site. If you choose to go this route, you are blatantly stealing bandwidth and ad revenue from YouTube. You are also doing quite a disservice to the folks who originally uploaded the videos.

Your niche site won’t require massive amounts of traffic to be successful, so I doubt YouTube would bother to take legal action. But, that doesn’t make it right. From a pragmatic point of view, it’s also just plain stupid. YouTube is more likely to find a way to encrypt direct access to its videos … thus, you’d be left with a worthless collection of nothing anyway.

The better approach is more time consuming, but in the end safer and more productive. Simply contact the video owners directly through YouTube’s “send message” feature. Explain the concept of your new site and ask if they would like to be featured. In most cases, not only will they be thrilled by the request, but they will likely begin to frequent your website, participate in forum discussions, and offer valuable articles and blog posts. Can you think of a better way to start a thriving, niche community?

Handling Video Hosting Costs

Once you have your videos and explicit permission, host them yourself. Wait, isn’t that going to cost a fortune? Isn’t that going to bring my web server to its knees?

Not if you use Amazon’s S3 file hosting service.

Amazon offers a pay-as-you-use hosting model built on the same scalable platform used to run its own mega-business. It is dirt cheap at pennies on the gigabyte and is already powering a wild new array of innovative online businesses, websites, and services. The good news? It’s simple to use and manage. Your grandmother could probably figure it out. The better news? I have it on good authority that a future release of Ultra Video Gallery will offer built in support for Amazon S3. Until then, you can manually point UVG to videos hosted on Amazon S3.

What are you waiting for? Get out there and start your online niche community today!

How have you put Ultra Video Gallery to work? Please share your comments and/or questions below. And if you have enjoyed this review, consider subscribing to our RSS feeds or signing up to get blog updates by email.

Join the New Haven DNN User Group

Mary Veranis — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 21:45:00 GMT

It's been a while since I've posted.

There are a lot of things happening in the New Year and with DotNetNuke. To kick off 2008, Tom and I started a DNN user group for the New Haven, CT area.

We look forward to getting together to discuss the platform, share knowledge, and collaborate on business opportunities. User groups offer members the chance to meet other local Web professionals and DotNetNuke enthusiasts, get questions answered, and have some fun along the way.

Don’t be shy though as these meetings are for everyone - from first-time computer users to experts from every profession, background, and age.

Want technology to do more for you? Join the club! We hope to see you at our first meeting (more details coming soon.)

Oh, and the best way to "stay in the loop" is to subscribe to our RSS feeds or get blog updates by email.

A New "Old" World Destination

Tom Kraak — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 20:17:00 GMT

It was a fun project to move the "old world" into DNN while meeting and exceeding all client requiremtents at the same time.

Seablick Consulting has done a very good job with redesigning our website gotocentraleurope.com.

As a marketing cooperation for six European destinations, our website was in desperate need of a visual makeover including the integration of our new corporate design.

We chose Seablick Consulting because they developed a very clean and clear layout with attention to detail and web standards. The communication and response times have always been great and we are very happy with the results. Thank you!

Michaela Klare
General Manager, North America
German National Tourist Office