Hello Joe and Lee and others,
Just as an update to this thread I talked with powerdnn (my hosting company) in regards to the best way to approach a more solid SEO experience via the use of Friendly URLS.
I was told that Ifinity was known to become problematic when the need came to do an upgrade to the next DNN version. Apparently the work around if you have installed Ifinity onto your server was to disable the module via ifinity's instructions (which I haven't verified exists) before upgrading to the next DNN version what ever it might be and their should be no conflicts with the upgrade.
However having said this I did kinow that my latest clients that are using the later versions of DNN right from a fresh install (i.e. 5.4 and 5.6.1) did not have these tabids as part of their string in the url but rather instead of tacking on the tabid with default.aspx at its end it was tacking on whatever the name of the page was that was created with the aspx at the end.
For example when I did a fresh install of DNN using DNN 5.4.2. I noted that when I created a contact us page instead of the absolute url being something like
http://www.yourdomain.com/tabid/554...fault.aspx it would be something to this effect http://www.yourdomain.com/contactus.aspx.
Of course the latter is much more friendly so I asked the tech support people at powerdnn if they had any knowledge as to what could be done to achieve this in DNN versions that have been incrimentally upgraded since 4.x till we reached the 5.x era.
As stated earlier the newer clients I have in which had a fresh install of DNN on version 5.x do not automatically use this tabid approach in the URL's where as the ones that started with a fresh install in 4.5 and incrementally crawled up to 5.4.2 and beyond still have this problem existing.
At any rate to sum up the story the technition looked into how this might be accomplished without using ifinity module which can be problematic when upgrading to another dnn version if you forget to first disable the module per the modules venders instruction.
So upon a little research they came up with the following link as seen below:
http://www.dotnetnuke.com/Community/Blogs/tabid/825/EntryId/1637/Turn-on-HumanFriendly-URLs-in-DNN-4-7-0.aspx
I created a txt file to attach to this reply but can't figure out how to attach a txt file to ths form when you are replying to a thread opposed to creating it. I know I saw the ability to attach a file when I created this as a new thread but now I can't find where I can attach a file as the replier of my thread.
Anyway Joe or Lee if you can help me to know how to do this within your active forum module when someone is replying that would be really great and at that time I will attach the txt file I created with the contents of the above website I posted.
But to sum it all up I guess I am replying to this thread to give viewers an update on what I have discovered via talking to powerdnn and looking at this thread in regards to the potential dangers of ifinity module but also to ask anyone who might have further knowledge about the approach talked about in this DNN blog.
Has anyone like me tried this approach with their DNN install in which they have been incrementing their upgrades since before DNN released their 4.7 version that implemented this friendly URL provider which I would assume could replace the ifinity module that did what DNN didn't do before 4.7 days.
Anyway just want to know your input on any issues that you either ran into or heard about or seems reasonable in regards to tweaking the web.config file to use the human friendly url provider.
In other what kind of dangers might one run into in doing this in regards to page breaking because the tabid no longer shows up in the url, etc...
I realize anytime someone is tinkering with their web.config file their is a danger in crashing the whole site but I am more concerned not about this possibility (as a good admin would make a backup of their web.config file before tinkering) as much as I am concerned about potential page not found 404 errors do to the fact that a new provider was used that has rewritten the url hence caused breakage to occur.
I realize the potential danger in this when dealing with html modules where someone has hard coded a link that uses this tabid approach but I guess I am speaking more about issues where solpartmenu, DNN Navigator or one of the newer DNN menu providers that was routing to the pages with tabid in the url break because the menu still tries to route to these pages even though the human friendly provider tells DNN to rewrite the page in a more friendly way.
So I guess the bottom line is with the use of the human friendly URL provider does it play nicely with the menu navigational providers especially the new one I am looking into using that is totally CSS friendly which is dynamic garden menu or something like that I know you guys have a tutorial about how to style this particular menu.
Anyway just need some input as I delve into an overhaul of a website that has been upgraded incrementally over and over again ever since like 4.5.x and now I feel it is high time we make it as SEO friendly as possible as well as web standards friendly as possible by getting rid of those nasty tabid in the url and swapping the new DNN navigational menu provider for the truly CSS friendly one called dynamic garden or something close to that, which as Joe stated in another thread I wrote does truly make use of the unordered list construct rather than giving you an attribute in which you can put unordered list in its value but not truly becoming totally non tabular as I discovered from experimentation. No matter what attributes I tried to tweak with the dnn navagational menu I could not seem to get it to lose the basic table structure in favor of the unordered list one.
So I will definately be overhauling the menu provider in favor of this free dynamic garden one but just need some feedback in regards to the wisdom of using this human friendly provider instead of infinity module to take control of the rewriting of my urls
I guess what I need to know from this community is the following:
1. is there any draw backs (besides potentially your whole site crashing because you didn't end a tag in your web config file properly or some other foolishness like that) in using the human friendly provider that now comes as part of the core providers for DNN since 4.7.x era opposed to using the modular approach via infinity besides the ones I am aware of which is the issue of having ifinity enabled when trying to make an upgrade.
I guess I'm thinking why should I use Ifinity if DNN has a good human friendly provider that comes free as part of its core as long as I do the grunt work of making sure it is wired up. I mean does ifnity have better SEO results than say the use of human friendly provider that comes inherantly with the newer DNN versions.
What would be a good reason to opt for one solution over another?
Thanks for your help in brainstorming with me the best path to take in turning my URL's into more human friendly therefore search engine friendly URL's as the answer you guys contribute will be valuable not just to me but to the DNN community that looks at this site.
Thanks,
Bo