By Rip Rowan on 11/12/2008 12:06 PM

The DotNetNuke Blog module has had a checkered history with Permalinks.  The earliest versions did not use them, so old blog entries never had a Permalink created for them.  Instead, links to entries were generated programmatically, on the fly.

It’s been trouble ever since.

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By Rip Rowan on 11/3/2008 10:09 AM

Taxonomy is one of the least understood weapons available for SEO.  We all know the basics of effective SEO:

• URLs constructed with relevant terms, avoiding parameterization
• Each page can be accessed by only one URL
• Effective use of keywords in the title tag
• Use of keywords in H1 tags
• Links back to the page from other pages

How does taxonomy fit into all of this?

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By Rip Rowan on 10/29/2008 7:02 AM

Last night I was desperately seeking help for some DotNetNuke core classes, and I came up short.  Fortunately I was able to resolve my problem with a little help from Antonio, but I still wished I had a better help file available.

Well, today I discovered that Ernst Peter Tamminga has put together an MSDN-style help system for DotNetNuke.  Exactly what I was looking for.

If you do serious DNN development, this is a must-have.  Thanks Ernst!

By Rip Rowan on 10/16/2008 8:42 AM

After a few months delay, the Blog team is set to release the 3.5.0 version of the DNN Blog module.

I won’t go into the details of the reasons behind the holdup.  Our team leader has done a good job of that here, if you’re interested.  Suffice to say, sometimes, there are circumstances beyond one’s control.

I am not sure at this point if there will still be a 3.6 interim, or if we’ll proceed directly to version 4.  I’m sure everyone knows my opinion!  At any rate, it’s good to be back on track.

By Rip Rowan on 8/17/2008 3:22 PM

The DNN Blog team has announced plans to release an interim 3.6 release to provide some final changes before undertaking the effort to rewrite the code for the version 4.x release.

The 3.6 feature set has not been made official, but current plans are to add support for BlogML, tagging, 301 redirects, and custom RSS URLs.

All effort will be made to minimize scopecreep, since it is a high priority to move forward with 4.x, but we felt that these critical changes needed to happen sooner than could be provided by 4.x.

By Rip Rowan on 7/5/2008 12:49 PM

I stumbled across a bit of text that clarified an earlier discussion on tagging:

Hierarchical: indicates a parent-child (vertical) relationship like cat and dog are children of mammals)

Association: indicates a "similar to" (horizontal) relationship like mammals is similar to animals.

Bingo!  This is what people think of when they create categories and tags.  Categories are hierarchical, and tags are associative.  The problem is - they're both right and wrong.

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By Rip Rowan on 6/14/2008 9:07 PM

Identification icons are quickly becoming a popular way for bloggers to encourage responsible use of blog comments.  A variety of solutions are available, all of which aim to provide useful benefits to the blog reader.

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By Rip Rowan on 5/31/2008 5:36 AM

A lot needs to happen to make the DotNetNuke Blog module truly competitive.  Part of the problem is that there are competing needs for the module:

• Use as a "personal" weblog
• Use as a publishing platform

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By Rip Rowan on 5/2/2008 10:57 AM

Currently, the Blog module implements a concept called "child blogs".  These are sub-blogs of a parent blog, which are broken out in the user interface as separate sections, each with its own administrative rules.

Since the Blog module doesn't currently support the idea of categories or tagging, a lot of people use the child blog functionality as a means of providing a categorization function.  In fact this is often the recommended use of child blogs.  IT Crossing's lovely metaPost product takes this one step further, by integrating the categorization function in LiveWriter to the child blog capability in the Blog module.  Unfortunately, this misuse of the existing functionality is going to have to change, and the sooner, the better.

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By Rip Rowan on 5/1/2008 3:46 PM

In my latest post, I mentioned that I really view tags and categories as two facets of the same thing.  Turns out I'm not alone.

This interesting post explains how WordPress implements tags and categories.  Like me, it's apparent that they view both tags and categories ultimately as the same entity type: "terms".  They then overlay a set of structures that enable various use of "terms" in the WP UI.

I think a similar - if not identical - approach should form the basis of tagging and categorization in the DNN blog module.

By Rip Rowan on 5/1/2008 3:41 PM

I'm inclined to view "tags" and "categories" as just two facets of the same thing: knowledge hooks we apply to content to help us find it.  My gut tells me that these things tend to be viewed as two different beasts because of the way they've historically been implemented.

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By Rip Rowan on 5/1/2008 3:38 PM

I'm cooking up a categorization / tagging module for the DotNetNuke blog module, and really would like to get it right the first time.

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