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I hope everyone is having a good morning! Today we are glad that SunBlogNuke v5.3 is available for free upgrade.
In this building, we focused on fixing lots of issues introduced from v5.x, such as upload thumbnail button not clickable and avatar not resolved correctly. If you ever upgrade with older v5.x, we recommended that you should upgrade this stable package. In a couple of days, we will collect more feedback about this building and if possible we may repackage it with more small fixes. So please pay close attention to our announcements/updates. Thanks a lot for your trust on our dnn products.
Major Highlights in v5.3:
Min dnn version required: dnn 5.3.1
- ENH - SEO enhancements with archives views.
- FIX - date token issue in the content slider widget with multiple languages environment.
- FIX - bugs "delete action show for blog contributors role" and "not all email notify templates show in the admin panel".
- FIX - script conflict with jQuery and made Admin bar as well as the various module Admin action buttons all disabled.
- FIX - resolved thumbnail url issue and upload button not clickable.
- FIX - url not found when shared with 'LinkedIn' item of social widget.
- Lots of other small fixes
The complete details for all of the changes can be found in the Release Notes.
You can get it here. Blog your way and enjoy life. :)
The SunBlogNuke Team
Google, Microsoft and Yahoo announced support for a new 'Canonical Link Element' in the header of your website page that will help clean-up duplicate url's that have been indexed by search engines. This issue is so specially serious in DotNetNuke that there are duplicated contents returned for different urls. And we ever supplied a handy solution for our blogging module – SunBlogNuke in the tutorial - SEO Best Practices for DNN Blog Posts.
Today we released the new SEO extension - the alternative way to build the canonical link for your dnn blog post to avoid duplicate Urls. To apply the blog extension, it is so easy and just follow up the simple steps below:
1) Download it from the extensions directory.
2) Unzip it and upload the extension file Canonical.cs' into the folder $ROOT/bin/Blog_Extensions. If not exist please create it at first.
3) Open up the web.config and make sure that the blog extension element there. If not exist, add the directory 'Blog_Extensions' in the element [codeSubDirectories] and it looks like as follow:
<codeSubDirectories>
<add directoryName="HTML" />
<add directoryName="Blog_Extensions" />
</codeSubDirectories>
That is all. It should work like a charm - when visiting the post detail, it will automatically add the canonical meta tags to your blog post.
BTW, you may be interested in the similar guidelines about other awesome blog extensions:
Integrated Social Graph into DNN Blog
Post Comment to Journal of Active Social
Hope it helps. Blog your way and enjoy life. :)
One of the questions my clients most often ask is: “How do I make sure my dnn blog is SEO friendly and still interesting for my readers?”. Ultimate DNN Blog Module – 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. Below are some tips and tricks with the built-in features of SunBlogNuke , that will help you catch search engines’ attention and optimize your blog posts.
In our previous posts on Ultimate DNN Blog Module – SunBlogNuke hacks, we discussed the incredible flexibility of SunBlogNuke, which is one of the biggest reasons for its popularity among bloggers worldwide. In particular, from v4.0 we introduced the custom fields feature, which let users create variables and add custom values to them, are one of the reasons for SunBlogNuke’ flexibility and endless possibilities.
In this tutorial, we will compile a list of useful things that you can do with custom fields in SunBlogNuke (if you are not heard of custom fields feature please refer to the initial guideline firstly - Extend DNN Blog With Custom Fields). Among them are re-defining the <title> tag of every post and linking to external resources instead of the blog post.
Happy new year for everyone!
We hope you have been enjoying a happy, healthy holiday season and are looking forward to a prosperous year in 2011!
Today we are glad that the release v4.2 of Ultimate DNN blog module – SunBlogNuke is available for free upgrade. This release contains a new awesome features with the high priority – Custom Fields (please refer to the post for more details and some guidelines to get started - Extend DNN Blog With Custom Fields), as well as some great enhancements, such as enhanced tag url with SEO and enhanced Content Slider Widget with external utility scripts and styles, like NivoSlider or bxSlider, with which to build your awesome content slider. In the mean time, we converted "Category Widget" into an optional module, which you can add into any page at any time and point it to any blog on the portal. Soon the enhanced widget framework will be done and you will also easily develop your extended widget into your DotNetNuke blog. Please stay tuned :).
As usual, the complete details for all of the changes can be found in the Release Notes.
Major Highlights in v4.2:
- ENH - Enhanced Content Slider Widget with external utility scripts and styles, like NivoSlider or bxSlider, with which to build your awesome content slider.
- ENH - Supported custom fields and removed the thumbnail field in entry table.
- ENH - Combined 'Edit Blog' panel into 'General' settings.
- ENH - Supported ability to moderate comments in the post view.
- ENH - Enhanced tag url with SEO, like http://yourdomain.com/blog/tag/yourtagslug.aspx.
- ENH - Excluded the 'eNews' theme to make the install package smaller size.
- ENH - Converted "Category Widget" into an optional module.
- Lots of other fixes & enhancements.
NOTE: As with any release, we recommend you perform a complete file and database backup before performing any upgrade on a production website and that you first conduct a trial upgrade on a staging version of the site. Following these guidelines will ensure that you are able to recover should any unforeseen problems arise during the upgrade process.
Note that some issues may occur if your original version of SunBlogNuke is lower version, like 3.x, and you've developed your customized theme. Please BACK UP YOUR CHANGES BEFORE PROCEEDING and refer to the tutorial - Must-Read Note for SunBlogNuke v4.x and follow the instructions. Hope it makes sense.
You can get it here. Blog your way and enjoy life. :)
The SunBlogNuke Team
Today I finally converted the navigation menu of our website as an unordered list, which is originally built with TABLEs and so ugly for SEO. It is updated with DNN Nav Menu, which is a lightweight menu based on semantic markup like UL, LI tags. It will help search engines to better understand the menu structure. So it is an excellent news for us and our website with ultimate dnn blog module – SunBlogNuke.
Today we upgraded our blogging platform website with DNN Core Forum v5.0 and the latest Ultimate DNN Blog Module – SunBlogNuke v3.8.2. Until now everything works well. The new forum module includes more better SEO options available following best practices and integrated with more awesome core features like Taxonomy Integration and Core Profile Photo Integration. New Blue Theme is VERY excellent too. You can find more exciting features in the links - Forum 5.0 on DotNetNuke.com and http://dnnforum.codeplex.com/releases/view/53503
Also you may have a look at the release note about SunBlogNuke v3.8.2:
- ENH - Added new token [BIO] in the entity Author.
- ENH - Integrated with Active Social Journals.
- ENH - Provided more handy parameters in Rss Feed, including "item"(Limiting items number) and "excerpt"(Whether including excerpt when activating "Full Show in Rss Feed").
- FIX - Avatar broken when integrated with dnn core profile.
- FIX - Rss Feed ignore "items max" option and always returning all posts.
- Other small fixes & customizations.
As usual, the complete details for all of the changes can be found in the Release Notes.
Enjoy Blogging and Writing. :)
Today we are glad to announce that the built-in sitemap provider is available for Ultimate DNN Blog Module – SunBlogNuke. Actually the provider is inspired by the post Creating a Sitemap Provider For Your Module. Thanks Chris' efforts and great tutorial. From the guideline, I knew that in DotNetNuke Core 5.3 there was some work done around the Core search engine sitemap provider that was referred to as "The sitemap now allows module admins to plugin sitemap logic for individual modules" in the release notes. So modules that have many pieces of content on a single page (Ex. Forum, Blog, Articles, etc.) can be picked up by the search engine sitemap provider. The basic flow is so simple and straightforward that we just took some minutes to implement it.
Today I am glad to announce that the latest version of Ultimate DNN Blog Module - SunBlogNuke v3.5.4 Release Candidate is available for free upgrade, which implemented some the high priority feature requests and fixed some urgent bugs. As usual, the complete details for all of the changes can be found in the Release Notes.
Major Highlights in v3.5.4
- Fixed issue where draft posts appear in the archive post count.
- Fixed issue where scheduled posts appear in the archive view.
- Fixed issue where view count should exclude clicks from search engine crawlers and robots.
- Enhanced Author Widget with template support which you configure in the widget settings like Content Slider Widget.
- Supported search feature in post manage panel.
- Supported blogid and current (EntryInfo) properties in post view model.
- Added DashBoardZone widget which will provide better User Experience.
- Added new fields [Slug], [MetaKeywords] & [MetaDescription] for SEO and provided you more control over how your content is recognized.
- Supported convenient feature - the single-click approval emails for pending review comments.
- Supported new option with which you can control the length of Auto-Generated Feed Summary.
- Other small fixes & more customizations.
As with any release, we recommend you perform a complete file and database backup before performing any upgrade on a production website and that you first conduct a trial upgrade on a staging version of the site. Following these guidelines will ensure that you are able to recover should any unforeseen problems arise during the upgrade process.
When we released the SunBlogNuke v3.5.0 last week, some issues occurred in the upgrade process. Then we looked into the install package and found out the problem. It is because of their customized theme not compatible with the latest version as we came to the Conclusion in the post [Develop Your Customized Theme for DNN Blog Module]:
The benefits of developing customized theme is that you will not overwrite the modified design in the upgrade process. There may be some compatible issues with the latest version but it should not occur in common. Please note that if there exists some errors you may have to compare it with the core theme and try to fix it. And if you have any questions simply leave a comment and I’ll jump in and help you out.
For example, you open up the detailview.ascx in your customized theme and find out the register line and modify it as follows:
Original:
<%@ Register TagPrefix="uc" TagName="Rating" Src="~/DesktopModules/SunBlog/Shared/Widget_Rating.ascx" %>
Modified:
<%@ Register TagPrefix="uc" TagName="Rating" Src="~/DesktopModules/SunBlog/Shared/Rating.ascx" %>
Well, please feel free to get this release candidate here. Enjoy blogging and good writing! :)
The SunBlogNuke Team
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:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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