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Robert Garcia
Registered Users
Nuke Active Member
Posts:31
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| 8/02/2006 12:09 PM |
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Scott,
I've found that your mods are, without a doubt, the best available in the dnn community. I love the idea of the child links, because the fact of the matter is, with existing menu and navigation tools built in, there is just no way to make a dnn site SEO friendly, except, of course, with child links.
But here is my suggestion. There is a LAMP cms system out there that I found to have the perfect navigation, if only for SEO, and I don't know of any other coder that I would like to see try it.
http://www.modxcms.com/
This is the one thing that the LAMP community has on us. They have better navigation systems.
Can the ChildLinks, or the Links and the Childlinks be combined to create a navigation like the one from modx?
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Patio Umbrellas |
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Scott McCulloch
Administrators
Nuke Master
Posts:12450
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| 8/02/2006 9:47 PM |
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I just checked your feedback entry, but am not sure what you are referring to as the perfect navigation?
Do you mean the layout or the urls? |
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Scott McCulloch
Site Administrator |
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Robert Garcia
Registered Users
Nuke Active Member
Posts:31
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| 9/12/2006 11:47 PM |
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Scott,
Sorry I've been so long in replying to you on this. Been very sick.
Ok, what I mean about the perfect navigation is this. If you look at the website mentioned, http://www.modxcms.com/, you'll see that they handle links in a very SEO friendly manner. The solpart and the dnn menu are java constructs that NO SE bot can read or follow.
Little SEO tidbit, the more pages indexed by Google (of REAL content) with a self referring, or absolute link method, the better for PR. Internal links to add to some PR.
Ok, so let me describe what I'm suggesting.
Your childlinks module creates static, readable links. I love that to death. What I would love to see is a mod, similiar to the child links mod, that
A. Retrieves ALL tabs of a website
B. Creates an List of ALL LINKS. This can be an unordered list, that way, it is completely controlled by CSS. With CSS, I can take your average
ex.
mainlink
- link
- link
- link
- link
mainlink
- link
- link
- link
- link
And do anything with it.
With CSS, you can make it horizontal, verticle, drop down, rollover, what have you.
C. If this "perfect mod" where created, it would work directly with your Friendly URL Provider.
I'm not the best coder or conceptualizer in the world, but I do work extensively with SEO projects. The one thing that hold me back from deploying more DNN sites is the navigation.
I've read that this might be too many trips to the database. Well, what if this module, which now I see is different from the child links module, where not connected to the database, but used an XML file to store the Link Navigation.
In other words, as you create a tab, or page, of course it's save in the database, but the actual link information is written in the xml file as well. That way, less trips to the SQL database, and an xml file just filled with link information. I've seen other applications do this, especially in the LAMP community.
I know, just because they do this, doesn't mean we should. But we should.
Right now, I employ a bunch of tricks to get the SE's to crawl my DNN sites. One of them is using a real cool module from House of Nuke called the House Index
http://houseofnuke.com/Modules/HouseIndex/HouseIndexDemo/tabid/78/Default.aspx
If you notice, House of Nuke also has a Menu, that relies on CSS, however, it uses a javascript mouseover, that renders main pages unreadable by the SE's. If there was a skin object and PA that just rendered ALL links in list, and used it's own css file, then that would completely change the way DNN navigation would work, making DNN the uncrowned champion of CMS systems.
Wow. I'm verbose. Sorry Scott.
But this is what I meant. |
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Patio Umbrellas |
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Scott McCulloch
Administrators
Nuke Master
Posts:12450
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| 9/13/2006 1:38 AM |
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I agree about internal links, since changing to the friendly url provider, the page rank for privacy, terms, login, etc went way up.
If child links were to return all links, would they be in a nested list or something? I wouldn't worry about performance, all tabs are cached, so getting this information is not a performance concern.
I'm suprised about the SolPart not rendering OK to a search crawler, I thought some work had been done in that area.
So none of the menus out there, render OK for search engines? They should just render a list of links. |
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Scott McCulloch
Site Administrator |
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Kevin Rimlinger
Registered Users
Posts:50
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| 9/13/2006 7:00 AM |
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[quote]I agree about internal links, since changing to the friendly url provider, the page rank for privacy, terms, login, etc went way up.[/quote]
I have noticed this too and I love it. One thing, I have always wondered about... Is it possible to make the "Home" navigation link to www.domainname.com rather than www.domainname.com/home.aspx or www.domainname.com/Home/tabid/1/Default.aspx? That would be one more way to consolidate PR on the main page.
[quote]So none of the menus out there, render OK for search engines?[/quote]
Inventua's Side Menu is SEO friendly and has a lot of configuration options. I have found that it is a little confusing to set up, but once you've got it going you are in good shape. |
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http://www.homeofficeblues.com |
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Gary
Silver Membership
Nuke Addict
Posts:66
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| 9/13/2006 9:33 AM |
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You might want to take a look at this menu here on Snowcovered ... SEOmenu
I have been using it for about a month on my sisters site www.buffalolodge.net Its pure css with no javascript, and you can skin the menu anyway you like. It also spiders real well.
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Gary |
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Robert Garcia
Registered Users
Nuke Active Member
Posts:31
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| 9/13/2006 10:32 AM |
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I've seen that menu. And I would suggest that Scott take a look at it as well. That menu LOOK's fine, however, and not to blow smoke up señor Scott's you know what, I don't know who that developer is, and I know Scott thinks well ahead of most curves. In fact, I would go one step further, since Scott is on the Core team, to begin suggesting that the menu system should be revised.
[quote] I'm suprised about the SolPart not rendering OK to a search crawler, I thought some work had been done in that area.[/quote] Sorry, but if Google can't follow a real link, they won't follow a javascript link. Just won't happen. None of the SE's bots can "see" solpart, what happens is that if you put internal links to articles or other pages on your content, THAT's where Google picks you up. I've actually had a MASSIVE debate about CMS systems with a LAMP. Hey, I like PHP and MySQL, but there just is no CMS system out there with the power of DNN. But joomla, modx, mambo, and a bunch of others have clean, SE friendly navigation structures.
[quote] Is it possible to make the "Home" navigation link to www.domainname.com rather than www.domainname.com/home.aspx or www.domainname.com/Home/tabid/1/Default.aspx?[/quote]
Yes! On your Home Page Setting, in the Advanced setting area, change the link type to URL ( A Link To An External Resource ) and enter your url. Watch for canonization. Pick http:// or http://www, my suggestion is always go with http://www. because some schmuck out there will always point to it and Google might start penalizing you.
Scott, I would love to right a SE friendly recommendation list for any navigation that is considered. I just thought that since your Child Links Module already begain the trip, that you might be interested in either developing in further (It's gotta be a skin object) into an SE friendly navigation system. |
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Patio Umbrellas |
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Kevin Rimlinger
Registered Users
Posts:50
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| 9/13/2006 10:51 AM |
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Yes! On your Home Page Setting, in the Advanced setting area, change the link type to URL ( A Link To An External Resource ) and enter your url. Watch for canonization. Pick http:// or http://www, my suggestion is always go with http://www. because some schmuck out there will always point to it and Google might start penalizing you.
Thanks for the tip! That seems to be doing exactly what I wanted.
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http://www.homeofficeblues.com |
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Scott McCulloch
Administrators
Nuke Master
Posts:12450
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| 9/13/2006 8:01 PM |
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When I was talking about the SolPart menu, I thought it rendered differently when a search crawler hit the page (e.g just a list of links). I thought I had read this before.
I will take a look at that menu.
If you take a look at the old ventrian skin, it uses CSS to render everything from the top menu items, to the left menu items. I wrote some custom skin objects to do this. Have you seen it in action? |
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Scott McCulloch
Site Administrator |
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Robert Garcia
Registered Users
Nuke Active Member
Posts:31
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| 9/15/2006 7:50 AM |
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Yes, I remember it well. The one problem I had with the skin object was that you had to create multiple page templates for the depth of your site.
In other words, on your old skin, if you clicked on a top menu link, you would get, via your childLinks skin object, a vertical list of child links.
However, when you get click on one of the links, your siblings would dissapear, since the skin object only showed child links of the current page.
That's why I was impressed with the navigation of the modx website. With a list of links, I, or anybody else with knowledge of css, can do virtually anything.
I'm sorry, but I'm of the opinion that the SE bots don't see the solpart menu at all, at least from my experience. And if there is a setting to make the bots see a list of links, then I'm scared that, other than the main dnn site, the SE bots would consider this a no-no, because that's listing two different set of contents, one to the user and the other to the bot.
Lookit
http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:RbEHWb1IbfAJ:www.dnncreative.com/+dnn&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=4
I was checking a cached copy of dnn. Somehow or another, their links are showing up in the cache.
But now, look at your page.
http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:ihextgC3DrAJ:www.ventrian.com/+ventrian&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=1
SEE? no cached links.
If the links where PHYSICAL, a straight up, html link to a tab, with your Friendly Url mod, then BLAMO!
Now, can a links mod like I'm describing replace the solpart menu? Don't know. I guess it would have to be SERIOUSLY developed, to allow for non designers to be able to manipulate it, or just leave solpart in there for non designers. |
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Patio Umbrellas |
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Scott McCulloch
Administrators
Nuke Master
Posts:12450
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| 9/15/2006 3:14 PM |
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Yes, some links disappeared, you still had breadcrumbs to navigate back up though.
Well, some menu's do render differently under different circumstances, e.g. a search crawler probably won't have JS enabled.
Listed in the feature for RAD Menu is:-
"r.a.d.menu now generates code, which can be fully crawled and indexed by search-engines. Moreover, the menu will render a hierarchical list of hyperlinks, which can be used for navigation even when JavaScript is disabled or not present. "
This is the way I thought, a lot of the menu's worked. Maybe that's what I read, when javascript is disabled.
I'm not sure if using that search cache is the best way to test menus. They both displayed for me, but that's because my browser is looking at the cached html.
I'm not an expert on any of the menu systems, and it would be silly for me to develop one.
Let's ask the author of SolPart, what is supposed to happen when a search engine hits the site. I thought google sitemaps were invented as the work-around for this behaviour too. |
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Scott McCulloch
Site Administrator |
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Scott McCulloch
Administrators
Nuke Master
Posts:12450
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| 9/15/2006 3:24 PM |
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OK, I've done some investigation:-
You're fine using the menu as it is, but if you create child menu options under the top menus, for some reason they do not alway generate text links. However, I think this is being worked on, I know it does generate text links based on the browser's user agent accessing your site. For example, if I change the user agent string (via FireFox) to Google text links are displayed rather than the JavaScript generated links. This should help in getting the site indexed.
The way to see what google is seeing:- (Via FireFox)
How to edit the User Agent string
To change the User Agent string, just enter about:config as an address in the address bar of FireFox, the location where you normally enter a URL (link). I recommend to preserve the original value, which you can get when you enter just about: in the address bar.
Now press the right mouse button to get the context menu and select "String" from the menu entry "New". Enter the preference name "general.useragent.override", without the quotes. Next, enter the new User Agent value you want Mozilla Firefox to use. I added my name and a link to my web site to the original value. You can also pick one from the list of User Agent strings. Check the new value by entering about: in the address bar.
Detecting Googlebot cloaking
The User Agent string "Googlebot/2.1 (+http://www.googlebot.com/bot.html)", without the quotes can sometimes be used to discover sites that use a simple technique to feed Google's spider ("Googlebot") optimized web pages in order to obtain a higher position (spamdexing). This technique is a form of cloaking that is in most cases against the terms of services of Google. If you discover such a web site, and the page can be found with Google, report the offending site to Google for a better search experience.
The menu is changed to links on my site, albeit a level at a time. |
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Scott McCulloch
Site Administrator |
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Robert Garcia
Registered Users
Nuke Active Member
Posts:31
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| 9/15/2006 6:15 PM |
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I believe this is considered cloaking, that's why I'm such a big proponent of a new menu system for DNN. I'm sorry that you would not like to develop it, but here is a quote directly from Matt Cutts.
IP delivery: delivering results to users based on IP address. Cloaking: showing different pages to users than to search engines.
IP delivery includes things like "users from Britain get sent to the co.uk, users from France get sent to the .fr". This is fine-even Google does this.
It's when you do something *special* or out-of-the-ordinary for Googlebot that you start to get in trouble, because that's cloaking. In the example above, cloaking would be "if a user is from Googlelandia, they get sent to our Google-only optimized text pages."
So IP delivery is fine, but don't do anything special for Googlebot. Just treat it like a typical user visiting the site.
I know that this can be percieved in many different ways, however, with SEM being so incredibly important, why not have a trusted, standards based navigational system with no "tricks" or dependencies?
However, Scott, I feel so strongly about this, that I am willing to attempt it myself, even though I am not a coder, I'm what I affectionately call a "plugger" (find a peice of code, plug it in)
I would, however appreciate some tips or direction.
Maybe this is a project that we can all participate in, I mean yourself and the members of your website community. Since I am a very big fan of your work, and you are so responsive to your user's request, I'd like to "pay it forward" and give it back to you and the members here for free.
I just need a little help.
I'm going to set up a DNN project today for the creation of this mod/skin object. With your permission, I'd like to create a thread here on my progress, so I can ask for help or tips or even code exchanges, if possible. Like I said, I could use some help. |
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Patio Umbrellas |
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Mike Webb
Registered Users
Nuke Super Newbie
Posts:11
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| 10/23/2006 1:27 PM |
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Please excuse me for the interruption.
I am not that technically advanced, but I have heard about that DNN java menu thing, regarding Search engines. I had to lookup the meaning of SEO.
You guys sound like experts. At least, we know Scott is, right?
Anyway, I found this inexpensive "Footer Menu" solution (source is also available) here: http://www.snowcovered.com/Snowcovered2/Default.aspx?tabid=242&PackageID=4952
It works great for the user interface providing alternate website navigation, but I was wondering from your conversation here whether it actually creates those Search Engine friendly links to crawl my site or not.
It is not a module. I had to put it in my skin.ascx file(s). |
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Thank you,
Mike W
Loyal DNN User
since March 2003 |
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