SunBlogNuke - DotNetNuke Blog Module

"SunBlog's integration with Windows Live Writer allows us to write our blog entries offline, then upload them when ready. It was fast and easy to customize the blog to match our colors and font selections. SunBlog allows us to communicate with fellow ASPDotNetStorefront users in a clean and effective manner."

- Krista Young(www.aspdnsfusers.info)

As Ryan Caldwell said in the comments of "Why Bloggers Need SEO":

SEO is to blogging like editing is to writing a book. You can’t write a good book without editing. You can’t write a good blog without SEO. Editing sharpens the focus of a book. SEO sharpens the focus of a blog. Editing happens both as a separate act and as an “in the process” act. SEO can be done both in the act of blogging (choosing a good headline), and separately (off-site linkage, etc.)

we share the same point and our DNN blog module [SunBlogNuke] also apply the exact principle.

SunBlogNuke, straight out of the box, comes ready to embrace search engines. Its features and functions guide a search engine through the posts, pages, and categories to help the search engine crawl your site and gather the information it needs to include your site within its database. SunBlogNuke comes with several built in search optimization tools. If you had ignored them, I would like to show you them as follows:

1. The ability to create apparently static URLs called permalinks.

   There exist a filed called [Post Slug] in SunBlogNuke. With it our blog platform will create apparently static URLs called permalinks with this post title. Please get the more information about Post Slug from the previous post 5 Killer Features will be Available on SunBlogNuke.

2. Place the title of the post in the page title tag.

   There are a number of things to keep in mind when it comes to titles. Google pays particular attention to titles - so make sure you get them right. Fortunately SunBlogNuke have automatically done it for you. Not only it places the title of the post in the page title tag, but also it includes a flexible option that postfix the page titles with blog name. For example, my post title is "Search Engine Optimization for DNN Blog Module” and our blog name "SunBlogNuke Team Blog", when you visit the post the page title will formatted as "Search Engine Optimization for DNN Blog Module - SunBlogNuke Team Blog". Yes, you can turn it off if you think that it will more SEO without the blog name. Indeed there is a point that if you’re just looking from an SEO perspective don’t include your blog name in the title tags of single posts. This dilutes your keywords. Of course if you’re looking more at branding including your blog’s name in the title tags might be worth doing. You can get more SEO tips about blog title from this post 10 Tips to Awesome, Eye-Jerking Post Titles.

3. Auto Generate Meta Description

   You should know that it is essential to include the META Description tag on all your web pages for better search engine indexing. But out dilemma is, how do we populate the “content” section of the META description dynamically based on what content we’re viewing?  Simple — we use a combination of conditional tags and a custom loop to pull either the page title (if we’re on the homepage) or the description (if we’re in a single post). With that our blog platform will create such unique description tags for each post page. Usually, most bloggers don’t take advantage of the use of the “optional description” section of their Write Post panel. But if you want to exercise even more control over what gets displayed on the search engine results page(SERP) for content, then you need to be filling this section out.  If it’s blank, your post description will just be the first 150 (that is the max length for Meta Description) characters in your post.

4. Meta keywords support

   The SunBlogNuke also support Meta keywords with a combination of page key words and all tags of each post. But recently Google Confirms Meta Keywords Tag Not used for Rankings, you just ignore it and let it there now.

Though SunBlogNuke comes with several built-in features for SEO, please keep in mind that “Content is King”. The quality of the posts you write is the single most important factor when it comes to Search Optimization on a Blog. Quality content that helps people will quite often draw a reader to want to share what they’ve written - of course they do this by passing on the link to your post and often they’ll do it in a way that helps your search rankings (on their own blog for example).

Additional resources about DNN SEO:

DNN SEO Quickstart Guide

DNN SEO Case Study Part 2

Here I will share you how to integrate twitter with DNN website or DNN blog module, like our SunBlogNuke module. It will help bridge the gap between blog posts and IM. It's also a great way to keep people informed quickly and easily.

With SunBlogNuke v2.4.9, we had enhanced the featured widget(called "Content Slider Widget" in the latest package, too) module for more scenes, like the latest posts or top posts. This is a really nice way to help internal linking in your site and a great way to make sure that your older, but more popular posts continue to receive plenty of internal link love to keep them ranking in the search engines. In the mean time, it supports more customizations.

By the enhanced widget module, you will can include a "Recent Posts section" in your sidebar or your landing home page. That provides an at-a-glance index for your latest posts. Especially if you write long posts, the recent posts section allows readers to see what you’ve been up to without scrolling down a lengthy page.

Also you can include Top Viewed Posts section. You know that once your classic posts leave the home page, they’re often buried in your site. Like displaying trophies on a mantle, showcasing your classic posts allows more readers to find and enjoy them. Together with the core related post feature, your readers will get the more information from your blog and doing so can increase the page views per reader.

It’s now very easy to do this yourself. Here’s how to apply it:

1) Add the "Featured Entries Widget"(called "Content Slider Widget" in the latest package, too) module in the sidebar of your blog.

2) The module will show the default settings with your recent posts but you have more controls to customize your layout and view mode. Please select the "Render Settings" from the left top menu to enter the widget settings panel. The options are pretty clear – here’s the screenshots as follows:

3) Just configure your customized settings and click "update" to apply it. That’s all. :)

Good luck and happy writing.

The SunBlogNuke team

Have you ever seen a blogger mention how important it is to schedule posts ahead? You know that there is a certain time in a day when each site gets its most amount of users or maybe you are going for a one week vacation, but you don’t want to abandon your blog. How do you fix these problems? Now it is generally a good idea to have a few posts scheduled ahead in case those things come up. If you are a SunBlogNuke user, you might not know that you have the ability to schedule posts ahead. It is actually quite easy! In addition to scheduling posts ahead, you can use old dates if you want your post to be dated sometime in the past.

Here is how to schedule your posts to be published at a different time and/or date:

1. Write your post.
2. Go to where it says PublishDate on the bottom of your Write panel and adjust the time/date to reflect when you would like your post to be published. You will want to verify that your blog’s time is set up correctly to ensure the post appears when you want it to.
3. Click "Save & Publish" to publish the post.
4. The post will now appear in the Manage posts panel, but will not show on your site until the designated date/time. If you date it into the past, it will post right away and show the designated date/time.

This is a useful way to keep a few posts saved for a rainy day or to keep content showing up if an illness puts you out of commission for a while. You can also experiment with posting times to see what works best for you and your readers. It is more important for SEO if there exists scheduled posts in your website. Google love website and blog with continuous post and updates. If you are posting more then 8 post a day and then for the next few days no post, You are actually hurting your website authority and page rank. With scheduling you can keep your blog running and your blog will never run out of the post. Maybe you should know the fact that Schedule your Posts for the Best Success.

Good luck and happy writing.

The SunBlogNuke team

Today we are very happy to announce that DNN Blog Module ("SunBlogNuke") v2.4.8 is now available. This release includes various enhancements and some bug fixes. Please review the last post about 5 killer features implemented in this release.

Highlight in v2.4.8:

• add the captcha feature to prevent comment spam.
• optimize the feed settings and support the alternate Feed Url, i.e http://feeds.feedburner.com/username .
• fix the default category feature.
• trackback enhancement in post-edit panel
• WLW enhancement, including support author feature and tag autucomplete.
• replace the filed [EntryName] with post slug.
• support the new category feature while writing post.
• some fixes and more customizations.

You can get it here.

If you want to see information about past releases, check out the release notes.

While our DNN Blog Module are used by more and more clients, we are trying to provide more documents and support information in the Official Website. So if you are finding how to get started with SunBlogNuke for your DNN blog, here you go. Let's take a step-by-step tour through your setup process and learn about how all the different functions work and how to create a new blog on your own.

1. If you want to know that how to set up SunBlogNuke, please get the more information from this post [The ultimate content workflow platform :: SunBlogNuke].
2. If you want to know that how to writing a post in SunBlogNuke, please visit the post [Basic Usage of the SunBlog Module].
3. If you want to know that how to integrate SunBlogNuke with third-party services or other client tools via the MetaWeblog API, please get it from here.
4. Don’t just limit yourself when you are applying our dnn blog module, please visit the tutorial for more tricks and tips 10 Awesome Tips and Tricks to Improve Your DNN Blog.

Actually you can find more blog help documentation on our Team Blog. Here you will find tutorials, documentation, tips and tricks and much more, for example, the latest building or release.

Good luck and happy writing.

The SunBlog team

Hi, guys

There exists a great news for you today, if you focus on our products. Now we provide the alternative way to purchase SunBlogNuke except the snowcovered sale. That’s you can purchase it directly from our website. Well, while SunBlogNuke can be purchased from either Snowcovered.com or direct from our site. Both options will get you the same great module and the same great support. And if you purchase direct, the prices are discounted and you automatically receive free updates for a year. It is a good news for you, right?  If you would like to get the more information about purchase, please visit here.

Note: If you are previous customers, please get the new license information and support from that post. And if you have more questions, please feel free to contact us, or by sending e-mail directly to us at dnnsun@gmail.com. We will try to reply you ASAP.

The SunBlogNuke team

You should know that DotNetNuke has one great feature – the ability to host many portals on one database and code line (a single DNN Installation). This means that you can have many completely non-related parent and child portals with very little overhead and server admin. In the past, the License Agreement on SunBlog(Nuke) was very vague and relaxed – basically you could use the modules on as many portals and DNN installations as you wanted. While this was great for the customer/subscriber, it was a little unrealistic and unsustainable for us in the long run. So we think that the Portal License is the best way forward and the most fair.

So to summarize, we will adjust the license with the key information as follows:

• Affects new customers only.

• Affects new modules versions only (starting with the v2.4.8 in September, 2009).

• Old modules fall under the old license and continue to be used as such. The old Professional license equals to the new Enterprise license and the old Enterprise license equals to the new Enterprise Developer license.

• Should not affect the majority of customers for average use (if it does we will tweak the license limits).

• The modules now have built in license checking to display an error message if the license limit is breached.

If you have more questions, please feel free to contact us, or by sending e-mail directly to us at dnnsun@gmail.com. We will try to reply you ASAP.

The SunBlog team

I'm pleased to announce that the latest building for SunBlogNuke will be available later. This version will be identified v2.4.8. It includes the 5 killer features as follows:

1. Captcha Feature

To prevent spammers from using web bots to automatically submit bogus comments, usually for the purpose of raising search engine ranks of some website (e.g., "buy penny stocks here"), we finally implemented the Captcha feature. By using a CAPTCHA, only humans can enter comments on a blog. There is no need to make users sign up before they enter a comment, and no legitimate comments are ever lost! Also you turn off/on in discussion settings panel as long as you would like to. Take a look at the screenshot and it is with such funny way:

2. Alternative Feed Url

Right now you can create a alternative feed url for your blog feed, for example, http://feeds2.feedburner.com/username. Then you will easily manipulate your current feed and other aggregate feeds.

3. Post slug

If you used the SunBlogNuke before, you should know that there exists the EntryName filed. Actually it is the initial Post slug and now it is totally replaced. By default, the post slug will be the blog post’s title provide you check the option[Show SEO Friendly URL].  For example, by default, this would post having the following URL:

http://www.yourwebsite.com/5-Killer-Features-will-be-Available-on-SunBlogNuke.aspx

Unfortunately, this is not a very search engine friendly URL, as many of the keywords are at the end of the URL.  By setting my own custom post slug, I am able to create a better URL for my post:

http://www.yourwebsite.com/Killer-Features-SunBlogNuke.aspx

In this case, my post title focuses on the keywords for this post, creating more emphasis on them.  The great thing about this tip is it takes a very minimal amount of time to do and will become second nature once you’ve turned it into a habit. Also we provide the utility feature that you can extract the post slug from title and adjust it into your expected value.

4. Default Post Category

When you post at your blog and forget to assign any category to it, SunBlogNuke itself assigns a category to it. This is called the “default post category”. The default category is initially "Uncategorized". However, you can change this default category in Writing Setting Panel:

5. Support author options in WLW

Until now we have enhanced more to support the WLW, this time we add ability to support author options in WLW. So you assign the author for the current post. It is useful when you are the blog owner or editor role.

Well, that’s all. Please look forward to our release for this building which including so many enhancements.

Good luck and happy writing.

The SunBlog team