DNN Guide Advanced Site Search & Indexing

If you've ever been into content management you must have heard of DotNetNuke Content Management System – now called DNN. If you aren't familiar with what DNN is or what Content Management System (CMS) is, we would do a quick introduction on it before we dive into the more technical stuff of DNN search and Indexing.

So in this article, we would address the following: What a Content Management system is, What DNN is, Submitting your site to Google for Indexing, DNN Search configuration, DNN Search item Prioritization, and Indexing. Let's get right into it! A content management system is simply what it is, a tool or system that manages your content on a website. It is used for storing, updating, and publishing all the elements that are contained on your website. The contents could be anything from video, text, documents, forms, data, or pictures.

In essence, a CMS is the back-end of any website where an admin or manager logs in using a password and username to access the website. This gives the user the ability to make and save changes to the website. Examples of CMS include DotNetNuke (DNN), WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal.

What is DotNetNuke (DNN) and How to Started?

DNN is an easy to use open-source framework that makes editing content straightforward. It is presently the most successful CMS framework on the Microsoft stack – i.e Windows server, .net framework, and SQL server.

DNN offers a CMS that is adaptable to all business types as well as a consistent user-interface throughout all its administrative fields. Since you know about the DNN platform, let's go into the crux of this article; DNN advanced search and indexing. The first step to take is to submit your site for indexing by Google search.

There are simple steps that can be taken to submit your site to Google search for indexing. To achieve this, there is a prerequisite. The prerequisite is that you must be A host account or a Super User account. Note that a Host has complete permission to all DNN site instances. Now the steps to submit your site to Google search for indexing.

• Step 1. Go to Personal Bar – click on Settings, then select SEO
• Step 2. Under the SEO section, go to the tab for Sitemap Settings
• Step 3. The next step is to submit the URL of your Sitemap
     a. From the Search Engine dropdown, choose Google and click Submit. You would be led to the Google Search Console Page in a new tab.
     b. Use your Google account to Log in
     c. Enter the URL of your site into the Google Search Console and submit Request.
• Step 4. Verify your ownership of the site
     a. Access the Google Webmasters tools page
     b. From the dropdown, choose website and enter your site's URL. Then click on Add a Property. You would be sent to a set of instructions to choose from; either the Recommended method or Alternate method.
     c. Choose the Recommended method tab (HTML file upload) and make sure you copy the filename provided by Google.
     d. Now go to your DNN Sitemap Settings page under the Site Submission section. Paste the file name from the previous step into the verification field and click on Create.
     e. Now go to the Google Verification page and click on verify after clicking on the "I’m not a robot” box.

Once this is set, we move on to our DNN Site search configuration.

DNN Site Search Configuration and Prioritization

The prerequisite to be able to configure search is that you must be an Admin on the site. Admin accounts have full access to a particular site. The steps needed to configure the search are stated below.

• Step 1. Open your personal bar and navigate to settings. Under settings click on Site settings
• Step 2. Under the site settings, navigate to the search tab and then Basic settings sub-tab
• Step 3. Configure the search settings under this section.
  
  Minimum Word Length - Maximum Word Length
  The section that specifies the length of words allowed to be indexed. The length of words defines the number of single-byte characters in a word.
  
  Custom Analyzer Type
  This refers to the full name of the custom analyzer to index the content. To force an existing content to be re-indexed with a new custom analyzer, click on the Reindex Content of Reindex Host Content buttons in the Search Index section.
  
  Enable Partial-Word Search
  If enabled, you can use wildcards to search for substrings inside words; i.e., not at the beginning of the word.
• Step 4. To attain the prioritization of search items, follow the same steps from Step 1 through Step 2 and then use the sliders to either increase or decrease the search priority for each information type.

DNN Site Indexing

Indexing simply refers to the method of indexing all the contents (or allowed contents) of a website. It also refers to the database used by search engines which contains all the information on a website found by the search engine. Once your page or website is not indexed by a search engine, your page or website will not be found or seen by users.

When indexing DNN site content, you have the option of either compressing index or reindexing. Please note that these functions are CPU-intensive and you should consider carrying them out during off-peak hours.

Reindex Content: The prerequisite to reindex content on a site is “Administrative access”. You must be an admin to make and save changes to a specific site. To reindex a site simply means you want to rebuild a site index using the data already stored on your index table. This replaces the old copy of the index. The steps to reindex your content include:

• Step 1. Open your personal bar and navigate to settings. Under settings click on Site settings
• Step 2. Under the site settings, navigate to the search tab and then Basic settings sub-tab
• Step 3. Click on Reindex Content
• Step 4. Click on Reindex Host Content

Compress the Indexes: The prerequisite to compress the index on a site is “Administrative access”. You must be an admin to make and save changes to a specific site. To compress the index of a site simply means to reduce the amount of space that is occupied by indexes on the site. The steps to compress the index on your site include:

• Step 1. Open your personal bar and navigate to settings. Under settings click on Site settings
• Step 2. Under the site settings, navigate to the search tab and then Basic settings sub-tab
• Step 3. Under the search index, Click on Compact Index

Clarity DNN Experts

In conclusion, DNN has pretty easy features that can make your site look all exquisite. In addition to this, DNN is scalable and can be used to create a variety of websites. Moreover, the platform uses ASP.NET language (based on the C# language), which can be run on a windows server.