By Lee Sykes
May 2009
In this tutorial we demonstrate how to use iFinity’s URL Master module. The URL Master module is one of the essential modules for your DotNetNuke websites as it creates Search Engine Optimised URLs and eliminates duplicate content from the Search Engines.
The URL Master module gives you complete control over the URLs in your DotNetNuke website, this helps to improve your search engine rankings and therefore drives more traffic to your website.
The module allows you to create Human and Search Engine friendly URLs, for example; you can remove the tabid section of a DotNetNuke URL. You can choose what to replace spaces with in URLs, such as hyphens, and you can also specify your own URL for a DotNetNuke page using specific keywords.
There are various options available for custom redirects and you can also eliminate duplicate content.
A default installation of DotNetNuke allows you to access a single page using several URLs, for instance:
- http://www.dnncreative.com/Subscribe/tabid/81/Default.aspx
- http://www.dnncreative.com/subscribe/tabid/81/default.aspx
- http://www.dnncreative.com/tabid/81/Default.aspx
- http://www.dnncreative.com/Default.aspx?tabid=81
If a search engine indexes each of these URLs it will read each of these URLs as a separate page and therefore may index these pages as duplicate content and penalize you for it.
The URL Master module overcomes this through the use of 301 redirects. Each of the variations of a URL are 301 (permanently) redirected to the new URL created by the URL Master module, for instance, the new URL could be:
- http://www.dnncreative.com/subscribe
Because the module is using a 301 redirect it informs the Search Engines to re-index their content using just the URL Master formatted URL and therefore completely eliminates duplicate content and provides you with the best search engine optimized results possible.
This module is also very useful if you are replacing an old website with a new DotNetNuke website or if you are reorganizing the pages of an existing site by using the 301 redirect functions of the module.
This module is available to purchase from
iFinity.
The videos contain:
Video 1 - Introduction and Installation
- Introduction and overview of the module
- How to download the URL Master module
- How to install the URL Master module
- How to upload the license file
Time Length: 7min 49secs
Video 2 - Friendly URL Settings
- Friendly URL Generation settings
- Force all URLs to be in lowercase
- Replace Spaces in Page Titles
- Page Extension Handling
- How to apply the changes
Time Length: 7min 26secs
Video 3 - Friendly URL Settings and Testing
- Viewing an example URL in lowercase with spaces removed
- Convert Diacritics in page names to Ascii equivalent
- Page extension to use
- URL query string parameter order
- Do not generate Human Friendly URLs for these pages
- Viewing an example of base friendly URLS
- How to test friendly URL settings
- URL rewriting and redirection settings
- Do 301 redirect on URLs not in friendly URL format
Time Length: 8min 53secs
Video 4 - URL Rewriting and Redirection Settings
- Do not 301 redirect these pages
- Action for pages which have been deleted or have expired
- Produce an exception in the site log if two pages have the same name / path
- Do 301 redirect when URL is not in lower case
- Do 301 redirect for /default.aspx requests to the site root
- Do 301 redirect to single subdomain
- When switching from https -> http use client based redirect
- Advanced Rewriting Settings
- Rebase client URL when rewriting virtual URLs
- Forward pages with external URLs defined
Time Length: 8min 15secs
Video 5 - Advanced Rewriting and Redirection Settings
- Advanced Regex Filters
- Advanced Page Index Cache Settings
- How to test URL rewriting and redirection functions
- Rebuild page index
- Revert to standard provider
- How to un-install the module
Time Length: 7min 40secs
Video 6 - Page URLS Redirection Settings
- Page URLs
- Page Redirection Settings
- How to view the redirection settings for a page
- How to add a new 301 permanent redirect URL
- How to add a new 200 http action URL
- How to delete URLs
- How to view the base friendly URL status of a page
Time Length: 9min 8secs
Total Time Length: 49min 11secs