Beginning Module Development-Planning Your Module Project

Planning Your Module Project

Of course, to succeed in any project, you should plan it out before you start writing even one line of code. Planning includes considering the answers to any number of questions as well as readying your resources.

Business Considerations

You're going to have to ask yourself or your project team a few questions before beginning your application development. For example:

Q	Can the development effort justify the savings that your application will provide?
A	Many factors can come into play: skills of in-house staff, costs associated with obtaining the skills, and many others that you will have to account for.
Q	Can the module be purchased from a third party?
A	DotNetNuke has grown in popularity over the past couple of years, and the outlook is for continued growth. More independent software vendors are developing modules, so more than likely there is no need to develop a module to accomplish a specific task — you can purchase it for very little cost. As of this writing, more than 250 modules are currently available for sale, and many more are available as free downloads. Some of these modules are written specifically for the 1.1 version of DotNetNuke, but there is an increasing number specifically targeting the ASP.NET 2.0 platform and DotNetNuke 4.0. If the module developer has written the module to conform to the same standards as the DotNetNuke core modules, the module will function in either the 3.2 version for ASP.NET 1.1 or the 4.0 version developed for ASP.NET 2.0.
Q	Is training required for developers?
A	Module development does require some additional skills. You develop modules in DotNetNuke using the standard tools you would use to do any ASP.NET development, but knowing how to take advantage of the available interfaces requires some understanding of the framework's inner workings. In addition to this book, many resources are available for learning about DotNetNuke if you want to investigate further. You may develop modules in any language supported by the .NET framework, including C#, J#, and VB.Net. This discussion sticks with VB.Net, the language in which DotNetNuke is written.
Q	Should you hire an outside resource to do the development?
A	Training becomes less of an issue when you have your development done by an outside resource. DotNetNuke's popularity has increased at such a phenomenal rate that many solution providers specialize in module development.
Q	What infrastructure issues are there?
A	How many developers are going to be working on the same code base? The more developers working on the same code, the more there is a need for source control. Scalability also may be something to consider. In addition, if you have to access resources over the Web, you need to read some of the application settings configured at a host level in DotNetNuke.
Q	Do you need to develop multiple data providers for the module?
A	What database are you going to use for the backend? DotNetNuke supports a Provider Model that enables developers to abstract out the physical database interaction, allowing the actual DotNetNuke core and module logic to be separate from the database logic. DotNetNuke supports SQL Server out-of-the-box, but a provider can be developed for basically any database backend. How many physical databases you need to support will determine how many providers you need to develop. Module development closely mirrors the DotNetNuke architecture, and you should create a provider for each platform you want to support. If you're going to distribute your module on various DotNetNuke installs with different databases like SQL Server, Oracle, or MySQL, you need to develop a provider to support those individual databases.
Q	Do you need to support different versions of DotNetNuke?
A	DotNetNuke is a mature product with several released versions. There have been many major architectural changes going from version 1.x to 2.x and to 3.x. DotNetNuke 4.x uses essentially the same provider model as DotNetNuke 3.x. At the time of this writing, the latest release was DotNetNuke 4.0.2. If you are developing on a later version, verify that there have not been any changes to the provider model for your version. If your module needs to be available on these various versions of DotNetNuke, you will need to manage the various code bases to accommodate all the required versions.

Note

Modules developed for version 3.2 (on ASP.NET 1.1) will run on version 4.02 (on ASP.NET 2.0) unaltered because of their binary compatibility.

Q	What resources are needed for ongoing support of the module?
A	This may not be as much of an issue for modules purchased or developed by an outside party. You may be able to obtain adequate support from the vendor. If you develop in-house, you'll need to set aside resources to provide ongoing support of the module.

Of course, this list is not all-inclusive, but the example questions should be enough to help you determine the questions you need to ask regarding your own application.

Ready Your Resources

Now that you have decided to begin module development, you need to prepare your development environment. The source and project files are available in the DotNetNuke distribution file that you can download from www.dotnetnuke.com. Just as you installed DotNetNuke on the production server in Chapter 2, you need to configure a development machine with the source code — and the process is the same.

Ensure that your development environment is configured with Visual Studio .NET 2003/2005, SQL Server 2000/2005, or MSDE/SQL Server Express (or your specific data provider). In addition, if you are working with your source files in a location other than the DotNetNuke default (c:\dotnetnuke), you may need to change the solution file (dotnetnuke.sln) and the web information contained within the solution (dotnetnuke.webinfo) to point to the location of the virtual directory for your environment. That will ensure that you can open the solution correctly in Visual Studio .NET.

You may want to consider installing Visual Source Safe, or some other source control to ensure integrity of your project source code. Installing Source Safe is beyond the scope of this book, but it is recommended that you use some sort of source control to protect your development.

Another item to note is the publishing process from your development environment to your production environment. Because DotNetNuke is ASP.NET-compiled into several assemblies, the most it takes to publish to production is simply copying the development assemblies, user controls, associated ASPX, and resource files. Before you compile your module for production, ensure that the build configuration in Visual Studio.NET is set to Release, not Debug.

In many environments, an extra stage in the development process is added by placing a sandbox or testing server between development and production. The testing server should mirror your production environment as closely as possible — install your module to the testing server and test first. After the business units review the functionality and ensure it meets the requirements, publish the module to the production servers.

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Extending the Paypal IPN in DotNetNuke

The default Paypal IPN solution offers basic functionality for creating a subscription based site. Undocumentated but very useful are 'paypalsubscriptionreturn' and 'paypalsubscriptionnotifyurl'. Both variables can be used to change the way Paypal subscriptions are handled in Dotnetnuke.
http://www.smallbizserver.net/Default.aspx?tabid=285&EntryID=90

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Keywords Research Guide

ref: http://www.dnncreative.com/Articles/SearchEngineOptimization/MajorKeywordsResearchFreeGuide/tabid/123/Default.aspx

Researching the major keywords to use within your website is the most important task you have to complete before writing any content.

If you are using the wrong keywords, your website will be lost in cyberspace and reaching the top 10 from a search result in Google will be a mere dream!

Following this excellent guide Search Engine Optimization Made Easy, it mentioned the Wordtracker website.

I have carried out some further research and found this 75 page guide produced by Wordtracker.

Having read through this in an hour, it's invaluable. It features leading experts in the SEO industry and asks them to provide keyword advice to a fictional company selling vegetarian dog food online.

Click here to download the free Keyword Research Guide (Right click and "Save Target As" to download the pdf direct to your computer)

Download Size: 1.8MB

Click here to visit Wordtracker

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What is RSS?

ref: http://www.dnncreative.com/Articles/RSS/WhatisRSS/tabid/150/Default.aspx

RSS is a technology that has the potential of overcoming many of the internet marketing challenges we are facing today and becoming a preferred tool to get 100% of your content delivered to your subscribers, as well as a tool to help you achieve top position search engine rankings.

The simple RSS explanation from the marketing point of view is that RSS is a simple to use publishing tool for marketers and publisher. It allows you to get your content delivered to end-users, without the fear of spam filters stoping your messages, and to other "content consumers" (other websites, search engines and so on).

RSS gets your content delivered, period. And it helps you increase your search engine rankings and drives new traffic to your sites.

But some marketers are still afraid that not enough internet users are using RSS feeds. Think again …

While achieving not more than marginal penetration, its usage is growing with astounding speed.

Actually, according to a report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 5% (6 million) Americans online consume news and information through RSS aggregators. So the market is already out there!

But What Are RSS Feeds?

RSS content is delivered through RSS feeds --- simple files structured in a specific way.

These files include some basic information about the RSS feed (such as RSS feed title, logo, description, URL etc.) and the actual content you want to deliver to your readers.

These content items are individual stories or articles (usually just descriptions of articles actually published on the internet publisher's web site), presented in a linear list.

But RSS is not only about text. You can easily use it to deliver audio content, video content and even PowerPoint presentations and PDF files.

What Do You Need To Subscribe To RSS Feeds?

The point of RSS feeds is to get people to subscribe to them, so that they can constantly receive fresh information from you.

It's just like subscribing to e-mail newsletters, only that there's no e-mail involved … and consequently no spam or spam filters.

But to subscribe to your RSS feeds, your visitors need a special tool, called an RSS aggregator.

RSS aggregators are special tools that can take an RSS feed and display it to the end-user. They come in many different forms and flavors, but the most popular are desktop applications and web readers.

In the case of desktop RSS aggregators (example: http://www.awasu.com), end-users need to download them to their computers and install them there. Web-based RSS aggregators (example: http://www.bloglines.com) on the other hand are websites where users can create their own accounts and then use those websites to view RSS content directly from their Web browsers.

After installing an RSS aggregator or registering at a web-based RSS aggregator web service, the user needs to proactively add the link to your RSS feed in to the aggregator to view your content.

Every time you update your RSS feed by adding new content items to the RSS file, the user is notified of that through his RSS aggregator, making the content immediately available to him, without it having to face any SPAM filters and other barricades on the way.

And, for the best part, most RSS aggregators are free to use, so there's really no excuse to not get started today. And by the way – so are quite a few RSS publishing solutions!

Yes, RSS is the free way of getting your content delivered every time.

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The 7-Step RSS Marketing Plan

ref: http://www.dnncreative.com/Articles/RSS/The7StepRSSMarketingPlan/tabid/176/Default.aspx

If you're wondering how to get started with RSS marketing, here's a basic 7-step plan that should provide some needed guidance. Use these steps as your personal RSS marketing checklist to get you started and help you see whether you're on the right track.

1. Start using RSS as an end-user

The first step to getting started with RSS marketing/publishing is getting your own RSS aggregator, subscribing to other RSS feeds and just seeing and understanding how it all works.

There's a variety of RSS aggregators to choose from. Just a small sample:

• Web-based RSS aggregators (websites): http://my.yahoo.com, http://www.pluck.com, http://www.newsgator.com, http://www.bloglines.com
  
  
• Desktop RSS aggregators (software): http://www.awasu.com, http://www.bradsoft.com/feeddemon/,  http://www.stevenwood.org/stories/2003/06/08/voxLite.htm
  
  
• Integrated RSS aggregators (integrate with IE or Microsoft Outlook): http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/ (browser with integrated RSS features), http://www.newsgator.com, http://www.pluck.com, http://www.attensa.com/index.php?ys=1

2. Plan your RSS feeds

Planning your RSS feeds might be the most important thing you do with RSS. You most certainly need an RSS feed for your e-zine, your news section, your articles etc.

But, how you decide on the RSS feeds you wish to offer and how to package the feeds, amongst other important issues, are much more complex than we can cover in this space. A precise overview of all of the opportunities is available in the "Unleash the Marketing and Publishing Power of RSS" e-book at http://rss.marketingstudies.net/book/t/

You might also want to do follow-up (autoresponder) RSS feeds, feeds for your affiliates, feeds for your employees or business partners, feeds for the media, and so on.

3. Create a list of RSS marketing/publishing requirements

Then create a list of requirements for the RSS marketing/publishing solution you will be getting to publish your feeds. The list should answer the basic questions, such as:

• Do you want to integrate RSS publishing with your existing content management system?
• What RSS metrics you'll want to watch? For example, are you satisfied with just a rough idea of how many people are reading your RSS feed, or are you interested in more precise subscriber counts, clicks and even individual content item popularity?
• Do you need feed personalization, such as personalizing your RSS content with the recipient's name and other details?
• Do you want to provide your subscribers with the ability to precisely select the content they want to receive in your RSS feed (customization), such as by content topic, keywords, authors and so on?
• Do you want the RSS feeds to be hosted on your own server?
• Do you need the ability to target promotional messages or other content to your individual RSS feed subscribers, for example based on their previous clicks and reading habits, or even their subscription data?
• What's your budget?
• Etc.

More information on all the different possibilities provided by RSS is available in the free Business Case for RSS report at http://rssdiary.marketingstudies.net/case/index.html?src=sa13

4. Choose an RSS publishing tool and create your first feed

After you've prepared a list of requirements you can start searching for the appropriate tool.

These come in a few general categories:

a) Desktop feed generation tools

Desktop software you can use to inexpensively, quickly and easily generate RSS feeds, but doesn't allow for more advanced features such as content targeting. The market leader in this category is http://www.feedforall.com.

b) Hosted online RSS publishing solutions

If you don't want to be bothered with a desktop tool and having to constantly upload your RSS feeds to your server, you could try a basic hosted online RSS publishing solution, such as http://www.myrsscreator.com. Using their simple service you don't even need your own website to publish via RSS. Another good choice, especially if you're in PR, is http://www.press-feed.com/

c) Advanced RSS marketing solutions

These will cover more advanced RSS marketing capabilities, such as metrics, scheduled autoresponder messages, database building capabilities and similar. The strongest contenders in this market are http://www.simplefeed.com, http://www.nooked.com, http://myst-technology.com and some other strong players as well. Solutions aimed especially at smaller companies include http://www.rssautopublisher.com and http://www.market-soft.com/bypass/

d) Other options

There are many other options as well, one for example being using your existing content management system to publish RSS feeds, or using a blog publishing solution such as http://www.movabletype.com

5. Promote your RSS feeds through your own channels

a) Create an RSS presentation page

On which you explain: what RSS is; how the visitor will benefit from using RSS; where they can get a free RSS aggregator (recommend one yourself!); how they can subscribe to your RSS feeds; and why they should subscribe to your own RSS feeds.

Then, on this same page, include the links to all of your RSS feeds. In addition to the standard orange RSS button, also include direct links for subscriptions via MyYahoo! (get it here http://my.yahoo.com/s/button.html) and other relevant services, such as Bloglines (http://www.bloglines.com).

b) Now promote this RSS presentation page

As much as you can using all of your available channels.

c) Promote your RSS feeds

Directly below your e-zine subscription box, and always "above the fold". Promote your RSS presentation page (telling your visitors that's where they can subscribe to your feeds) on the most prominent locations of your site.

d) If you're publishing more than one RSS feed

Using a couple of focused topic feeds, promote each of them next to their topics on the site.

e) Promote your RSS feeds

In all of your e-mail messages and e-zine issues.

f) As for the content

Don't just say "Subscribe to receive news from my site", but rather prepare compelling copy to specifically show your visitors why they need to subscribe to your content in the first place and why they should subscribe specifically to your RSS feeds.

e) Enable Auto-discovery

Just include the following piece of HTML code in the <head> section of your webpages and you'll be all set:
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS" href="ENTER_RSS_URL">

6. Promote your RSS feeds through external channels

a) Submit your feeds

To the appropriate search engines and directories. A good list can be found here: http://www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55/

b) Ping the RSS aggregation sites

Each time you update your online content, letting them know that new content is available to be indexed. You can use this free service: http://pingomatic.com

7. Other key RSS activities

a) Measure and optimize your feeds
b) Syndicate your feed content to other web media
c) Display third-party RSS feeds on your site

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The RSS Promise for Internet Users

ref:http://www.dnncreative.com/Articles/RSS/RSSBenefitsforInternetUsers/tabid/175/Default.aspx

The RSS promise for end-users is simple:

• A unified one-stop-shop to consume online content, without having to visit dozens of sites every day to see what's new and without having their online subscriptions interfere with their personal and business e-mail communications
  

• Complete control over their content consumption, including a quick, easy and reliable mechanism to unsubscribe from content they do not wish to receive
  

• The ability to receive breaking news as it becomes available, without having to wait for a monthly, weekly or daily recap sent to their e-mail addresses
  

• The certainty of actually receiving the content they want, without the fear of it being stopped by spam filters on the way
  

• The ability to receive rich-media content directly to their desktops, including audio and video content
  

• The promise of providing the tools to make their lives easier, including receiving critical content updates as soon as they become available.

These points are not simple enhancements, but important advancements that can fundamentally change how internet content is consumed. Furthermore, these points themselves prove why marketers need to start implementing RSS now!

To bring the point home, let us inspect some of the content services already powered by RSS.

Library Elf: Making the library experience easier

(http://libraryelf.com/)

Library Elf helps you keep track of your library accounts in one place and received reminders, such as what library material is due, overdue and ready for pickup. Library Elf uses the power of RSS to help you forget about your library accounts and instead be directly notified of the changes you're waiting for, directly to your desktop.

Indeed: Helping your find the right job

(http://www.indeed.com/)

Indeed.com provides its visitors with job seeking results from hundreds of sites and then makes the search results accessible via RSS feeds. Users can subscribe to individual search results, pertaining directly to their search keywords to be notified immediately when new jobs are available.

Flickr: Sharing your life in picture

(http://www.flickr.com/)

Flickr is the most popular photography management and sharing service on the web, enabling end-users to upload their photos and then make them available to their friends, associates and family through a wide assortment of content delivery channels, including RSS. By subscribing to individual Flickr feeds from their users, everyone can have direct access to the latest life experiences from their friends.

RSSCalendar: Sharing your events

(http://www.rsscalendar.com/)

RSSCalendar.com allows individuals and companies to share their personal or group calendars with the rest of the world, letting everyone that matters know of where and what they are doing next, delivering this information via individual RSS feeds.

Coupons.com: Savings to your desktop

(http://www.coupons.com/)

Coupons.com brings the best deals and coupons to internet end-users, helping them save money by discounted shopping. As of late, they also started delivering coupons through RSS feeds, giving their subscribers direct access to their latest offerings.

PubSub.com: Tracking the world

(http://www.pubsub.com)

PubSub.com is an amazing service that allows you to track practically everything going on around the world by matching your keywords with tens of thousands of online content sources, and enabling you to subscribe to your customized search results through customized RSS feeds.

RSSAuction.com: Tracking your purchase interests

(http://rssauction.com/)

If you're a regular eBay user, you certainly want to keep track of new products available, which precisely match your interests. RSSAuction.com helps users keep better track of eBay by giving them a tool to first create a comprehensive list of product requirements and then delivering the search result through an RSS feed. As soon as new products matching individual interests appear, the user is notified of that through his RSS aggregator, giving him the ability to start bidding immediately and without having to visit eBay every day to find the right products.

Upcoming.org: Keeping track of local and social events

(http://upcoming.org/)

From the Upcoming.org website: "Upcoming.org is a collaborative event calendar, completely driven by people like you. Enter in the events you're attending, comment on events entered by others, and syndicate event listings to your own weblog. As Upcoming.org learns more about the events you enjoy, it will suggest new events you never would have heard about."

Feedbeep: The ultimate 'time-to-information' tool

(http://www.feedbeep.com/)

Depending on who you are and your current life situation, many content alerts are critical for you. If you're looking for a job, you want to know immediately when a new one matching your precise interests is available, and so on. While RSS brings this information to your desktop, that might not be fast enough. Feedbeep.com takes internet content delivery one step further, by empowering users to have their critical content updates delivered from an RSS feed directly to their mobile phones via SMS.

RSS Empowers Consumers

The one thing all of these RSS-based or RSS-empowered services have in common is that they empower consumers.

They empower them by getting the content that matters to them delivered directly to their desktops or online content aggregators, but still giving them the power to unsubscribe within moments of not being satisfied with the content they are receiving.

Even more so, these services empower consumers to create social networks and easily share their information with their friends, family and associates on a large scale.

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Podcasting Interview with Scott Schecter

ref:http://www.dnncreative.com/Articles/Podcasting/PodcastingandDotNetNukeInterview/tabid/181/Default.aspx

I have the pleasure in presenting an email interview with Scott Schecter from Schecter Technology Solutions discussing Podcasting, how it works, the benefits it can bring to your business and Scott's DotNetNuke® Podcasting module, NukeSyndicate.

Podcasting Overview:

• Q. Thank you for taking the time to join us Scott, please could you tell the readers about yourself: What is your background with DotNetNuke® and Podcasting?
  • A. My name is Scott Schecter I am president of a consulting and development firm located in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. After college my first job was in VB6/VBA development, and from there I moved into .NET development. I have been a .NET developer for about 3 years now. Somewhere around the DotNetNuke 2.X era I began developing applications for the DotNetNuke framework. This has grown at a tremendous pace and currently my consulting firm does the vast majority of its work for businesses targeting the DotNetNuke platform. I also do a lot of xml work for various entities and this is what sparked my interest in Podcasting originally. I just thought it was a very cool implementation of standard RSS 2.0 specification that had far reaching potential to engage users and facilitate communication.
• Q. Can you tell us about Podcasting, what it is and how it works?
  • A. Sure, lets turn to the Wikipedia for a brief definition as a starting place:
    
    Podcasting is a means of distributing audio and video programs via the Internet that lets users subscribe to a number of files, also known as a "feed" and then to hear or view the material at the time that they choose. A feed is usually in the MP3 audio format.
    
    Podcasting became initially popular in late 2004, largely due to software that enabled automatic downloading of audio both onto computers with suitable MP3 playback software and mobile devices that could play MP3 files.
    
    "Podcasting" is distinct from other types of online media delivery because of its subscription model. The idea is to provide the material not as a one-time delivery, but rather as a series of files that are delivered because end-users want to get the information regularly over time.
    
    This uses something called a "feed" (such as RSS or Atom) to deliver an enclosed file. Podcasting enables independent producers to create self-published, syndicated "radio shows," and gives broadcast radio programs a new distribution method. Listeners may subscribe to feeds using "podcatching" software (a type of aggregator), which periodically checks for and downloads new content automatically.
    
    The word "Podcast" is often incorrectly used to describe the posting of any link to a media-player-compatible audio file (typically MP3) on a website. Some radio personalities post MP3 versions of their shows daily, and even though they are not part of any subscription model, they are often called podcasts.
    
    Most podcatching software enables the user to copy podcasts to portable music players. Any digital audio player or computer with audio-playing software can play podcasts. From the earliest RSS-enclosure tests, feeds have been used to deliver video files as well as audio. By 2005 some aggregators and mobile devices could receive and play video, but the "podcast" name remained most associated with audio.
    
    "Podcasting" is a portmanteau that combines the words "broadcasting" and "iPod." The term can be misleading since neither podcasting nor listening to podcasts requires an iPod or any portable player, and no broadcasting is involved.
    
    Aware of that misleading association from the beginning, some writers have suggested alternative names or reinterpretations of the letters "p-o-d", without winning much of a following. One little-used alternative is "blogcasting", which implies content based on, or similar in format to, blogs. Another is "audioblogging."
    
    Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podcast
• Q. What content tends to be in a Podcast?
  • A. Podcasts tend to be audio or video files, although there are no specific limits on what type of file can be podcasted. Meaning one could podcast documentation, pictures, or even bittorrent files. The only real limitation on the type of medium you are podcasting is whether the users podcast client, commonly referred to as a podcatcher, recognizes those file types and will download them. Different client software supports different file types and some will let you specify which file types it will download.
• Q. How do you find Podcasts that are of interest?
  • A. There are several sites that index podcasts and many podcast catchers have these listings integrated within the application to make it easy for users to find a podcast targeted to their area of interest. Here are a few of my favorite indexes:
    
    http://www.podcastingnews.com/
    http://www.podcastpickle.com/
    http://www.thepodcastnetwork.com/
    http://podnova.com/
    http://www.podcastalley.com/
    
    There are many others, but these are some of the biggest.
• Q. Do you have any example podcasts that are worth checking out?
  • A. Some of the podcasts I listen to regularly are:
    
    http://thisweekintech.com/
    http://radio.weblogs.com/0001014/categories/dailySourceCode
    http://revision3.com/diggnation
• Q. How do you subscribe to a podcast – do you need any specialist software?
  • A. You will need a podcatcher that supports the enclosure element of the RSS or Atom specification to download the media file associated with the podcast. The mechanism for subscription depends on the software the publisher is using to publish the podcast. As a general rule though you will see a button on the site that says 'XML', or 'Atom', or 'Podcast' simply click on that button, and when the page opens copy and paste the URL for the feed into your podcast client, and you are done. The podcatcher will then begin to download the podcast for you automatically.
• Q. Is there a demand for podcasts? How many people are using / subscribing to podcasts?
  • A. There is a huge demand for podcasts currently, and I only see that growing as more and more businesses tap into the power of the medium and find ways to use podcasting effectively for their business model. Many popular syndication services are now supporting podcasting such as FeedBurner, which allows you to aggregate your existing feed with some additional features such as integration with many popular social services such as del.icio.us and Flickr.
    
    Here are a few stats I found regarding the various indexing sites I mentioned above, this should give you a rough idea of the popularity of the medium:
    
    Podcast Pickle: Number of Podcasts: 3119 Number of Episodes: 35061
    
    PodNova: 12,633 Podcasts
    
    Podcast Alley: Total Podcasts: 8023 Total Episodes:  175093

Marketing:

• Q. What benefits can podcasting bring to a website or business?
  • A.  The main benefit of creating a podcast is it allows the user to decide if he or she is interested; it then delivers the content you produce on demand to that user. Each time you publish something new it is syndicated to the user with very little action on their part. They need to simply open their podcasting client and the new material is automatically downloaded to their computer.
• Q. How can podcasting help with marketing?
  • A. Once a user has subscribed to your podcast they are opting in. This is of tremendous benefit from a marketing perspective because it helps to isolate your target audience. You as the producer need not worry about who is subscribed but only publish the content you wish for them to receive and the podcasting mechanism takes care of the rest.
• Q. How can businesses use podcasts to integrate within their marketing mix?
  • A. Podcasts reach a different subset of the market than traditional marketing. So in essence you're exposing a different group of users that perhaps would be missed by conventional mediums such as email newsletters, or whatever other medium a publisher might employ. So I think it adds a level of diversity to any marketing campaign
• Q. Can you give us some examples of how podcasting can be used?
  • A. Podcasting can be used in a variety of ways. Some of the more typical examples would be distributing audio or video to user. So if a company is attempting to sell a product, then one example would be a video demonstration of the product in use. This gives the user a concrete example of the service/product the company is offering.
    
    Another use might be to distribute audio files. For new and upcoming bands this facilitates a low overhead medium to reach new users. The costs to the band is minimum, basically the cost of producing the podcast and the bandwidth used to distribute it. Once a user subscribes it becomes very easy to distribute new material to the user with very little interaction on their part. They need not visit your site again, or check for new material.
• Q. What do you think is the optimum time length for a podcast?
  • A. That is really a hard one to give a definitive answer to. It would greatly depend on the target audience. In general the optimum length for a podcast is the maximum amount of time you can keep your listeners interested.
• Q. How can we measure how many people are listening or subscribing to the podcasts?
  • A. If you have a stats package on your website, then it will log each request for the feed URL. Additionally, many podcast creating packages offer logging as a part of the software.

Creating a podcast:

• Q. How do you create a podcast?
  • A. The first consideration is what type of podcast you are creating. If it is audio or video then you are going to need some equipment to record the podcast and mix it. This can vary from a microphone attached to a pc to a recording studio. Then one would want to consider the software they are going to use to create the actual feed for the podcast. So first, one needs to decide on what type of file you want to podcast. Then, consider the actual process involved in creating this file. Lastly, one would want to decide on how they will publish the podcast. 
• Q. Do you have any key tips for creating podcasts?
  • A. I think most important thing is to have fun. If your audience can tell that you believe in what you are talking about and are generally excited about it then that will come across in your podcast.
• Q. Are there any considerations we need to make before releasing the podcast?
  • A. The main consideration would be the cost of bandwidth. For example, if you have a 10MB show and you expect 6000 listeners will download weekly that would equal a bandwidth total of  240GB per month. So as you can see this can become a factor very quickly.
    
    However, this would be for an established podcast with lots of subscribers, so in general you will have some time to monitor and adjust your bandwidth needs as your podcast grows. Apart from production costs this is really the only cost associated with podcasting. Many sites use advertising to help offset this cost. However, this is definitely something one should consider before publishing a podcast.
• Q. Once you've created a podcast how do you promote it?
  • A. The best thing you can do is to get listed on one of the podcast indexing sites such as the ones I mentioned above. These sites provide a central location for interested parties to identify your podcast via subject of content, and offer exposure to large numbers of users that are familiar with the podcasting medium.

The module:

• Q. How does your module work & how can it help with creating podcasts in DotNetNuke?
  • A. NukeSyndicate basically allows a user to enter a few details such as a title, description, image, and file to be podcasted. It then automatically creates a feed from this information. The real beauty here is that a user really only needs to know basic computer skills to fill in the required information, and then NukeSyndicate takes care of the rest.
• Q. How much does your module cost? Is the source code available?
  • A. NukeSyndicate is truly free software licensed under the New BSD License. Let me further clarify what that means. It is free as in liberty, meaning that the source is always available and you can redistribute it provided a few minimum criteria are met. Additionally, NukeSyndicate is free as in free beer the cost to the user is zero dollars as well. My hope is that if people find NukeSyndicate useful they will consider donating to help support its continued development.
• Q. How do you think podcasting will develop in the future?
  • A. I think podcasting will continue to grow in popularity as the tools to facilitate it improve, and it becomes more recognized. Additionally, I think that podcasting will branch out to mean more than audio or video. Think about all the publishers in the world, and all the different formats they use to transmit to their users. As more and more people understand the capabilities of podcasting I think these formats will become more prevalent.
• Q. Any tips or comments for the readers?
  • A. I think the most important thing to consider when creating a podcast is what you hope to achieve. Think about what your desired outcome is when creating your podcast. There is nothing magical about the medium, the same rules that apply to any type of marketing hold true here as well. Podcasting is no marketing silver bullet but it can help diversify your offerings and facilitate better communication between your organization and its customers.

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Happy day, happy life!

Become a better Standardista

ref: http://www.dnncreative.com/Articles/WebDesign/BecomeaBetterWebStandardsDeveloper/tabid/210/Default.aspx

Learning to develop web-sites using web standards is a bit like learning the guitar, it's fairly easy to get started but to master it takes years of hard work and learning. With the right approach you can become more efficient.

Content first

Historically I would have started a project by creating a design in photoshop, convert that to XHTML/CSS and then add content. This is not the best way. Creating a site should hinge around the content. Understanding the content helps you to do a far better job of creating the site because you are laying out the content to support the goals of the site. After the content is mapped out, the design is created to support the content framework, be it a wireframe diagram or notes on the back of a napkin.

Another benefit that comes from structuring content first (as noted by Andy Clarke of stuffandnonsense.co.uk at @media 2005), you can't do anything until you have some idea from the client the objectives of the site and some level of content in front of you. This is a good way of finding out if the client is committed to the project.

Use the right mark-up for the job

Semantic mark-up is important. In other words the mark-up (XHTML) that you use to structure your page needs to be meaningful to the content within. Learn what each element can be used for; if you're not sure of the best way to mark up some content then research and find the best way. Be aware that html has it's limitations but with thought you can work around those limitations without compromising semantics.

Hand-code everything

Using a text editor to create XHTML and CSS will help you to learn about html elements. As you hand-code you will need to know how to construct a page correctly using the right mark-up as everything is up to you. Code-completion whilst it can be helpful, is actually harmful to your learning ability. Hand-coding has the other advantage that you are in control of everything you write, if the code you create isn't correct you can't blame it on the tool!

Build your site with accessibility in mind

Creating a site using web standards already assists you in making your site accessible, not only to those with disabilities, but also to every user of your website. To make your site fully accessible you need to have that in mind right from the beginning. Accessibility is not an afterthought you can apply retrospectively to a site. Learn how screen readers and assistive technologies work and try not to do anything that will exclude these users from being able to fully use your site. Most techniques are common sense and are easy to implement. If you feel you don't know enough about accessibility then look into it and put it into practice in your next project.

Avoid using hacks

When I first started making websites with CSS I found that I had issues with getting a design to work across all browsers. Next I learnt that I could use CSS hacks as a way to selectively overwrite the CSS rules to fix the differences, so I started using hacks every time I came across an inconsistency. This is a bad habit it's all to easy to fall into. The main thing you need to do to avoid this is to understand firstly that there are default styles in force in every browser, and these default styles vary between each browser. To combat these differences we need to reset the default styles before we apply our own stylesheets.

To that end we can use a special stylesheet such as Tantek Çelik's undohtml.CSS that resets the majority of the elements that have differences between each browser. Before you apply a CSS hack ask yourself "Am I fixing a known bug with this hack?" If you're not then maybe you're doing something wrong.

When applying hacks for IE bear in mind that IE7.0 could be released and fix some issues with standards support but still be susceptible to hacks designed for IE 6.0. Therefore the best bet is to use conditional comments. This proprietary feature in IE allows you to apply overriding styles only to that version of IE. In this way you can apply hacks to IE, safe in the knowledge that IE7.0 won't fail due to incorrectly falling for a hack targeting at IE6.0 though whether it will need hacks of it's own remains to be seen!

Don't use inline styles

Another bad habit is to use in-line styles to add styling as you code. This nasty habit is pure laziness, inline styles have the highest specificity of all (1,0,0,1) so using inline styles will dominate any styling you write for the same element in an external stylesheet. In addition the whole reason we use CSS is separation of presentation from mark-up so inline styles make no sense.

Make your site flexible for different text sizes (aka Bulletproof)

If you are using XHTML and CSS properly then you should be able to build a site that doesn't break if you resize the text. For example using Doug Bowmans's sliding doors technique can help where you need to use background images in elements that will resize as the text-size changes. A great resource for making your site unbreakable is Dan Cederholm's new book BulletProof web design

Use Javascript unobtrusively

Javascript as a client-side scripting language cannot be relied upon to be available on every user-agent, for example all browsers have an option to turn off Javascript. Because of this Javascript should only be used to enhance existing functionality and not break the whole site if Javascript is off. Avoid in-line events such as onclick, onfocus etc. Instead learn how to register event handlers in external scripts and make use of the DOM so that the behaviour layer is separated from the mark-up.

Ask for help

When you come across something you don't understand, try and spend the time to fully grasp it. If you use Google and find a resource that has the answer to your problem don't simply cut and paste the solution, read the article and find-out why it fixes your issue and you will have a useful bit of knowledge for the future.

Don't be afraid to ask for help from your peers (work colleagues, friends or community resources such as the sitepoint forums) (or dotnetnuke forums - ed.) when you need to. This can be a two way process, you will learn from others and others will learn from you.

Challenge yourself

If all you ever do is fixed-width designs then try a different approach with your next project. The more ways you experiment with layouts, the more you will learn. Try not to design a site with how you are going to execute it in mind, try experimenting with a difficult design to put your CSS skills to the test.

Get to events/courses

Where possible get out to any web-standards conferences/events or workshops you can. Not only is this a great way to learn, you also get to meet other web developers and designers where you can make friends/contacts and swap ideas. Find out if your company has a training budget and see what courses you can get yourself on. It's a great way to take your skills to the next level.

Resources

By no means should this be considered to be an exhaustive list but these are certainly good starting points for becoming a better standardista.

Mark-up/XHTML

• antek Çelik
• Molly E.Holzschlag

CSS and general Web Standards

• Doug Bowman - StopDesign
• Dan Cederholm - Simplebits
• Dave Shea - Mezzoblue
• Roger Johansson - 456 Berea Street
• Andy Clarke - And all that Malarkey
• Andy Budd

Accessibility

• Joe Clark
• Derek Featherstone
• Accessify.com - Ian Lloyd
• Juicy Studio - Gez Lemon
• Splintered - Patrick Lauke

Javascript

• DOM Scripting Task Force
• Jeremy Keith
• DOM scripting
• Stuart Langridge - Kryogenix.org
• Unobtrusive Javascript
• Quirksmode - Peter-Paul Koch

Browser Bugs / CSS Hacks

• Quirksmode - Peter-Paul Koch
• Dithered.com - CSS Filters
• centricle.com - CSS Filters
• Position is everything
• Box model hack

Events and training (UK)

• SXSW 2006
• @media 2005
• @media Master Classes
• Carson Workshops
• Clear:left training

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XHTML and best practice coding for skins and modules in DotNetNuke(R)

ref: http://www.dnncreative.com/Articles/WebDesign/CodingBestPractices/tabid/228/Default.aspx

What is XHTML?

XHTML, is a markup language that has the same possibilities as HTML, but it uses a stricter syntax.

The changes from HTML to XHTML are minor and basically raise the HTML coding to the XML standards.

The main areas that this covers are:

• The document must be well formed, all elements must have closing Tags
• XML tags are case sensitive, therefore within XHTML all tag names must be in lowercase
• All attribute values must be in quotes

Examples below: The HTML version demonstrates how you may have coded in the past, the XHTML version demonstrates the coding standards that you need to adapt to create XHTML compliant code.

Examples	HTML	XHTML
Lowercase	<TABLE> <P>	<table> <p>
Well formed tags	<br> <hr> <img … > <p>text here<p>more text	<br /> <hr /> <img … /> <p>text here</p><p>more text</p>
Quote attributes	Height=10px	Height="10px"

Further examples can be read in the Styleguide

And Wikipedia

Why bother with XHTML compliant code? What's it all about?

The main reason for creating XHTML compliant code is that XHTML will help your website display more reliably in browsers and devices such as PDAs, mobiles etc.

To quote the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium):

The motivation for XHTML Basic is to provide an XHTML document type that can be shared across communities (e.g. desktop, TV, and mobile phones), and that is rich enough to be used for simple content authoring.

The web is moving towards XML, so it's worth learning the correct coding techniques before learning any bad habits.

How does this affect DotNetNuke?

Using the standard settings of DotNetNuke and a table based skin while also ensuring you have XHTML compliant code will not make any difference.

If however you wish to improve the performance, accessibility, search engine results and reduce the bandwidth of your DotNetNuke skins, you can create CSS layout skins which do not use any tables.

Once you begin using CSS with DotNetNuke, you need to ensure that your code is following the XHTML standards. You may find that if you miss a closing tag for instance that it will completely ruin the display of your CSS skin.

The XHTML standards also need to be adhered to by module developers. Why?

Well, if you install a module into your pure css skin that contains missing closing tags such as <br> rather than <br /> or other non-compliant code, this may corrupt the layout of your skin, meaning that you will not be able to use the module with your skin until you can fix all of the non-compliant code.

Conclusion:

Study how to create XHTML compliant code and learn good habits. Even if you currently only create table based skins, you may wish to adventure into pure CSS skin design in the future. Applying this knowledge now will help you make the change to a pure CSS environment at a later date a much easier transition.

Regarding module developers, I would recommend that you implement XHTML compliant code to future proof your modules so that your modules can be used in as many various configurations as possible.

References and further recommended reading:

Styleguide XHTML Guidelines
XHTML Wikipedia definition
Semantics Wikipedia definition
XHTML Benefits
This HTML Kills: Thoughts on Web Accessibility
Better Living Through XHTML
Modifying Dreamweaver to Produce Valid XHTML
HTML versus XHTML
What is HTML / XHTML?
XHTML - Marking of a new dawn

Validation:
Validate your HTML code at W3C
WDG HTML validator
Validate your CSS code at W3C

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Happy day, happy life!

Google Adsense

ref:http://www.dnncreative.com/Articles/Google/GoogleAdsense/tabid/273/Default.aspx

In this article we are going to give you an introduction to Google Adsense and provide some tips for getting the most from Adsense on your websites. Following this we have also created a video tutorial which walks you through how to incorporate Adsense with DotNetNuke.

Google Adsense Introduction

Google Adsense is a quick and easy way to monetize your website. With Adsense you can display text and image ads that are targeted to match the subject matter of a website page.

This means that if you create an article covering 'DotNetNuke Skins' the ads from Google Adsense will display DotNetNuke related advertisements.

You earn money from the advertisements on a cost-per-click basis. The amount that you earn per click varies dependant on the keyword and the number of advertisers bidding for that keyword.

The Advertisements

The adverts displayed by Google come from the Google Adwords service: Bring targeted traffic to your site with Google AdWords

This is where advertisers can bid to display their advert whenever a user searches on Google for a certain keyword. An advertiser also has the option to display their advertisements on the publishing network (websites that display Google Adsense).

Displaying Google Adsense

You can choose from a variety of advertisement banner sizes to display on your website along with options for customizing the colour of the text adverts. This allows you to easily format the advertisements to match the design style of your website.

Once you sign up for a Google Adsense account you can configure the banner style and colours that you wish to use. Google will supply you with the JavaScript code that you need, all you have to do is paste the JavaScript into the source code of your website.

How Much Can You Earn?

There are several factors that affect how much you can earn from Google Adsense. Some Adsense publishers earn a five figure income each month whereas others earn a few dollars per month. Your income from Adsense depends on:

• The cost per click for each advertisement
• The number of visitors / page views your site receives
• CTR - Click Through Rate for the ads

You have to earn $100 or more before Google will issue a payment to you. The total is rolled over each month until you exceed $100.

Adsense Tips

If you view the resources at the end of this article there are several links to articles already created that outline tips for increasing Adsense revenue. Here I will outline the main tips:

Ad Placement

The position of the Adsense advertisements is very important for increasing click through rates. Google have created a heatmap to help you decide the best placement for your ads.

Number of Ads

You are allowed to display up to 3 ad units on a page and a single link unit. If you can, make the most of this and display all of these ads using different combinations of banner sizes and locations across your page.

Colour of Ads and Blending

Research has found that the best CTRs are achieved by blending the advertisements to match the style of your website design. For instance, remove all of the borders from the ads and change the colour of the text links to match the colour of the links within your own website. This helps to create the perception that the links are part of the page and not advertisements.

Other techniques are to place images alongside the advertisements in order to grab the attention of the visitors' eye. Be careful with these techniques though as Google is known for banning publishers who try to trick visitors to click on the adverts.

For further tips visit the resources below.

Useful Adsense Resources

Incorporating Google Adsense into DotNetNuke Skins - Video Tutorial

Sign up for Google Adsense: Get targeted ads on your site with Google AdSense

Digital Point Adsense forum for sharing Adsense tips

Useful article which outlines the Google Adsense programme: How to boost your adsense revenue

Advertising placement on web pages

Google Adsense Tour

Google Adsense Policies

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Software Piracy – A Small Business Epidemic

ref: http://www.dnncreative.com/SoftwarePiracyASmallBusinessEpidemic/tabid/318/Default.aspx

This email arrives in my inbox almost everyday:

No wonder at least one half of potential software revenue is lost due to piracy, a total of $11-$12 billion lost worldwide (1). These people know how to market! Our company currently has a need for some licenses of Photoshop, and at a startup every penny counts. So it was tempting, but knowing as much as I do about the blood, sweat, and tears that go into making good software, it is not going to happen.

Unfortunately not everyone understands and appreciates the value of your hard work. Believe it or not most piracy occurs not by these mass blackmarket software vendors, but by people for personal or business use with far less malicious intent. For instance, it is quite common for a company or individual to buy a single license for a DNN module or skin, and then re-use that on a virtually unlimited number of DNN hosts or sites.

DotNetNuke module and skin developers, and smaller businesses in general, are usually unaware or have little control of the fact that they are using pirated software. So much so that Microsoft has implemented a "self-audit" type of valid license checker (2). This helps Microsoft, but unfortunately it does not help protect your intellectual property.

Internet auction sites like eBay make it easy for software piraters to distribute illegal, downloadable software to unwitting buyers. According to Keith Kupferschmid, an executive with the Software & Information Industry Association, the industry believes 90 percent of all software sold on Internet auctions violates copyrights or licensing agreements (3). Furthermore, even when a module or skin is purchased via a valid distribution channel such as Snowcovered, there is nothing stopping someone from purchasing a single copy and re-using that copy illegally over and over again.

But can you blame these small business owners for being duped into using software illegally? For the non-savvy software user, terms of use agreements and software copy protection rights are just plain confusing! They are usually pages and pages long with a lot of lawyer-talk nonsense. Even worse, many DotNetNuke developers do not even specify a license agreement, which essentially means that no-ones rights are protected because those rights were never defined.

To cloud matters even further, there are several "urban legends" perpetuating software copyright abuse.

The 24-hour rule

According to this rule, under the copyright law a user may download a program and use it for 24 hours to determine if they want to continue using it - and then after the 24-hour period they have to delete it or buy it. This is illegal.

Copying software for Evaluation

This premise gives the okay to people copying paid-for licensed software from someone else. The idea is to install and use the software under the guise of evaluation purposes. This is illegal.

All DotNetNuke modules grant a Host-wide license

While this is the most common license for a DotNetNuke module or skin, there are many modules and skins that only grant a license for use on a specific DotNetNuke site or portal. Many users install their module on their host, and use it over and over again for many sites. Some users are further under the misconception that they also have the right to install a DotNetNuke module or skin on several hosts or servers. Both of these scenarios are illegal.

Redistribution of Free Modules or Skins

Free does not mean there is not a license associated with it, and most free or open source licenses have restrictions around modification and / or distribution. If I got it for free, then I can also redistribute this software because it is free. This is illegal.

Free use of Abandonware

Abandonware is software that a copyright holder has ceased distributing or supporting for more then five years. Abandonware is another urban legend created and circulated to justify violations of copyright law on the Internet. This is illegal.

Summary

To assist these honest businesses with software license compliance, it benefits all parties involved to take the guesswork out of copy protection. There are many technology-based techniques for protecting code and allowing legitimate customers to activate their licenses. Some are much better than others. For those whom are malicious at heart, they will always try to find a way to "crack" the code. But for the group of "accidental" copyright abusers aforementioned, they will more than likely pay for the digitally protected software rather than attempt to find a way of cracking it.

For developers concerned that protecting their DNN code and skins will dissuade potential customers from buying their software, this is the last great falsehood. In next month's article, we'll discuss the trials and tribulations of distributing evaluation software. Protecting your IP is the key to helping you sustain your business, potentially developers may no longer be able to afford the continued development and creation of modules if this is left unchecked.

If you would like to protect your code and protect your revenue starting today, visit http://my.flatburger.com.

Kim Lloyd has been in the software industry for over 17 years and has worked with both small and large software companies like MapInfo Corporation, Microsoft, MatrixOne, Monster, Oracle, and GlobalSpec.

She currently works for FlatBurger, a code protection and ecommerce-enablement software services vendor located in Troy, NY. http://www.flatburger.com.

(1) Every two dollars' worth of PC software purchased legitimately, one dollar's worth was obtained illegally according to the Third Annual Business Software Alliance (BSA) and IDC Global Software Piracy Study, May 2006

(2) "How to Ensure Your Software Isn't Pirated?". Hattie Bryant of Small Business School interview.

(3) "Software Makers Crack Down on Net Piracy". 2007. ABC News. Michael Liedtke.

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Happy day, happy life!

How to make money from your DotNetNuke website

ref: http://www.dnncreative.com/Articles/Business/Howtomakemoneyfromyourwebsite/tabid/297/Default.aspx

There are several ways in which you can monetize your DotNetNuke website. In this article we are going to discuss the methods that are available with the default modules in DotNetNuke.

These methods can be used with any type of website from a static to a dynamic website. The advantage of using DNN is the flexibility and ease of use for configuring and tracking.

Advertising

The first and easiest method for a web master to implement on their website is to enable advertising.

There are several advertising methods that you can implement and we will discuss each of them in turn.

DotNetNuke provides an easy solution for combining all of the various advertising methods through the use of the Banners module . The Banners module allows you to rotate advertisements on each page load, while also allowing you to track the number of click-throughs for each advertisement.

The banners module can display all of the advertising types that are mentioned below; it is not just limited to displaying banner image advertisements.

You can learn how to use and configure the banners module in this tutorial.

Payment Schemes

Before we discuss the various advertising methods, we need to explain the payment schemes that the advertising methods tend to use.

Pay-Per-Impression

Your payments are based on how many impressions you display an advertisers' banner for. An impression is a page view of the banner by a visitor to your website. Typically payments are calculated on a Cost-Per-Thousand impressions (CPM) basis ie. $5 CPM refers to $5 for 1000 displays of the banner. The higher the traffic on your website the more impressions you can generate and therefore the more advertisers you can display and create more income.

On very high traffic websites some webmasters use a pay per month method where you pay a set amount to advertise on the website for the month with a guaranteed minimum number of impressions.

Pay-Per-Click

You receive a payment each time an advertisement is clicked on. Payments for this can vary from a few cents to several dollars per click. The payment level depends on the niche and the consumer demand for the niche. Other factors that you need to take into consideration are your conversion level ie. How many times is an advertisement displayed before it receives a click? If you can generate a high CTR (Click-Through-Rate) and a high level of traffic you can generate a good source of income even from low paying pay-per-click advertisements.

Pay-Per-Lead

Here you receive a payment for any leads you send to the advertiser. The visitor to the advertisers' website may have to supply their email address and sign up to an email newsletter before you receive a payment.

You need to bear in mind that this may involve two steps. The first is the conversion of the visitor clicking on the advertisement on your website and the second is the conversion of the visitor on the advertisers' website signing up to the newsletter.

This type of income may receive fewer conversions than pay per click, but the payments per lead tend to be higher, so you can potentially earn a higher income than Pay-Per-Click.

Pay-Per-Sale

Potentially this method has the lowest conversion rate, but if the advertisers are carefully targeted to the niche topic of your website you could receive a large income. An example of this is the affiliate marketers that earn millions each year from selling other peoples products. In this method you only receive a payment when a visitor to your website purchases a product from your advertiser.

Payments

If you are implementing Pay-Per-Impressions advertising you can request payment for the advertisement up front before you allow the advertisement to be displayed on your website. For all of the other methods, payment tends to be held back until you have accumulated on average $100 in clicks / leads / sales. Also make sure that you double check how soon they make a payment after you reach the minimum payment level. Some programmes may wait 30 days until they pay you. This is important to check for the cashflow of your business.

Tip

If there is one tip I can pass on it is this. Test the advertisement method for a month and if it is not making enough money, analyze why:

• Do you need to increase the conversion rate?
• Do you need to increase the traffic?
• Is the advertisement suitable for your niche market?

Several years ago, I learnt a lesson the hard way. In the first year of creating a website directory, all of the advertising was based on the pay per sale method. The traffic on the website was high, the click through rate on the banner ads was good, but the sale conversion was very low (the products were not close enough to my niche). I made less than $100 in a year which I never received because the minimum payment was $100. I then switched to pay-per-click and pay-per-impression and made several hundred dollars in the first month! I realised I had literally lost thousands of dollars over that year from not testing and analyzing the advertising methods.

The DotNetNuke banners module allows you to rotate between ads that use the various payment methods, so you can easily setup and analyse the conversion rate of several advertising methods at once and avoid the mistakes I made.

As a starting point I would suggest that you try each of the payment methods and analyze which ones provide you with the most income for your website.

Note: I have had successes with Pay-Per-Sale; you just need to ensure that the advertisements are very close to your website market niche and that the visitors to your website are willing to buy products.

Advertisement Methods

You have several options available for advertising within your DotNetNuke portal. They can be split into two groups, image based advertisements and text based advertisements.

Image based advertisements

The banners module in DotNetNuke allows you to upload the following banner image types to your portal:

• Banner
• MicroButton
• Button
• Block
• Skyscraper

Here is an example of the typical sizes for these banner ads:

Text / Script based advertisements

Using the banners module you can display text ads or you can enter a script to display an advertisement from a programme such as Google Adsense, examples below:

The DotNetNuke Banners module advantage

The DotNetNuke banners module can display a combination of these different advertisement methods at the same time and rotate between the various advertisements.

For instance if you have an advertising space available on the right hand column of your pages, you could display within the same column, a text ad, a Google Adsense ad and another text ad. With the next refresh of the page this could switch to a skyscraper ad and two text ads. You can learn these advanced configuration techniques in this tutorial.

This has the advantage that the position of the advertisements and the type of advertisement is always changing, which should help to grab the attention of a visitor and avoid 'ad blindness.'

Email Newsletter advertisements

If you send a regular newsletter, you could include advertisements within the email. But, make sure that your recipients have opted-in to the email as they could become very annoyed if you send emails trying to sell them products. Here you can learn about the Email Newsletters module.

Programmes

We have covered the various payment methods and advertising methods, the next step is to find advertisers for your website and this is actually not as hard as it may sound.

DIY - Do It Yourself

Probably the first advertising method to appear on the internet and the hardest if you are just launching your website. This involves approaching companies that provide products or services that complement the niche of your website. In most cases you will need to provide a PDF document outlining the cost structure for advertising, the niche market, and the number of visitors / page views you receive on average each month for your website.

Make sure you include a 'Terms of Use' document in-case any problems occur with the advertiser and also create a page within your website informing visitors that you offer advertising. (You could combine this with a banner advertisement that states 'Would you like to advertise here?').

If your website is already established with a high amount of traffic, you may find that advertisers contact you to advertise on your website.

Payment method: Pay-Per-Impression and Pay-Per-Month are typical for this type of advertising.

Advertising method: All banner types, text advertisements and even email newsletter advertisements are suitable for the DIY approach. You can charge varying amounts for the banner types and position of the banner on the page.

Advertisements for content

This is one of the popular and easiest methods for creating an income from your website. It also requires no maintenance as everything is automated.

The most popular programme for this is Google Adsense. All you have to do is sign up to Google Adsense and add the short Javascript code to your DotNetNuke Banners module.

This will display advertisements directly related to the content of your page meaning you have very specific advertisements related to the niche topic of your website.

Payment method: Pay-Per-Click

Advertising method: Text ads are mainly used, but banner image ads can also be displayed. You have the option for configuring the layout of the text ads into various banner sizes.

I would recommend you view An Introduction to Google Adsense followed by this video tutorial, which walks you through how to incorporate Adsense with DotNetNuke. This is recommended over just using the Banners module for displaying Google Ads to increase your click-through-rate and profits.

Here is a selection of programmes that are worth experimenting with:

BidVertiser

Yahoo Network

Affiliate advertising

Here you operate as an affiliate to another company. In most cases you register with the company as an affiliate through their website. Some affiliate programmes require that you have a website and sometimes a minimum amount of traffic. The company will decide whether or not to approve or reject your application as an affiliate; generally this is based on the content of your website. Once approved, you will have access to the affiliates section of their website which will provide you with:

Your affiliate id – Place this id in the advertisement URL link. This id is used to track the click-throughs from your website.

Advertisements – Banner ads, Text ads, Email content etc. If it is a good affiliate programme they should supply you with a large selection of advertising content to choose from. You can place these advertisements in the DotNetNuke Banners module along with your affiliate link.

Tracking Reports and Stats – A good affiliate programme will allow you to view the number of click-throughs / conversions / sales / leads that you have made along with the amount of money you have earned.

Extras – Support, tips, help, forum, pricing structure benefits for users that generate a high number of sales etc. All of these help to provide a good affiliate programme.

Payment method: Usually Cost-Per-Sale and Cost-Per-Lead, some programmes will provide Cost-Per-Click.

Advertising method: All methods can be used, image, text and email advertisements. You can also incorporate links to affiliate programmes directly within the content of your website. For instance, if you are writing a book review, you could include an affiliate link to amazon.com for the visitor of your website to buy the book.

Affiliate Programmes

Here is a selection of affiliate programmes to get you started:

CPA Empire

MAXBounty

Azoogle Ads

Modern Click

Commission Junction

Amazon

Click Bank

Affiliate Tools

Pay Per Lead Power Ads - This is a really useful tool that allows you to search through the major affiliate providers from one website. Once you have selected the affiliate programmes suitable to your website niche you can then create text link ads which display in a similar way to Google Adsense. You can even set the tool to create links in your content which link to the affiliate programmes automatically.

Affiliate Information

The affiliate classroom is a useful resource if you are considering using affiliate promotions. Have a look at:
Affiliate Classroom

Affiliate Classroom tour video

Advertising Summary

The DotNetNuke Banners module is ideal for all of the various advertising options that are available. Make sure that you track the impressions, CTR, and earnings to ensure your advertising is profitable.

Further monetization methods

As well as advertising there are also the following methods of making money from your DotNetNuke portal.

Subscriptions

DotNetNuke allows you to easily setup subscription payments on your portal. This allows you to charge a fee for access to content such as articles, downloads, videos, music etc.

You can watch a video tutorial here demonstrating How to set up DotNetNuke to accept subscription payments

You can also purchase a module from Ventrian called Subscription Tools which is a user friendly method for implementing subscriptions on a DotNetNuke portal.

You need to bear in mind that the subscription method is not a passive form of income like the advertising method. It will involve many hours of customer support, creating content and maintaining your website.

Sell Products

The final monetization method that we are going to discuss in this article is the store. In the latest version of DotNetNuke (v4.3.6 at the time of writing) a store module is included in the core modules, however if you are looking for a more sophisticated store module, have a look on snowcovered for the various options available. Catalook is a popular store. Setting up a store is probably the most time-consuming option, but potentially the most profitable.

Customer support, world-wide deliveries, and credit card payments all need to be taken into account.

Conclusion

The default installation of DotNetNuke can be used to make money online without the need of purchasing additional premium modules. You can literally be up and running making money with just the cost of hosting, a domain name and your time to build the website.

The usual piece of advice is 'do not put all of your eggs in one basket.' In other words, do not rely on one advertisement type or programme, use a selection of income streams and if one fails in a particular month you will still be able to pay the bills.

Advertising is the easiest and least time consuming method for generating an income. In some cases, you can literally create a site and forget about it. Whereas subscription and stores require much more hands on time dealing with customers and maintenance of the website.

Please click here to add any questions, comments or further information you have found to be useful.

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