Hi everyone,

I'm evaluating CMS platforms for a site redesign and have some general questions to put out to the folks here.

1. We will be rebuilding an existing site, and in the process we do not want to lose any ground in terms of SEO. Ideally, we want to improve SEO with the new site. What are some things we need to consider when rebuilding a site in DNN, and how can DNN help us improve SEO?

2. If we begin developing pages and content with the built-in "Gravity" theme, how easy is it to switch skins once these have been created in another?

3. I installed the free version to demo the CMS. I did not see a blog feature out of the box. Is this a paid feature, or something to get from a third-party developer? If so, are there any community favorites?

4. Our plans include a Spanish version of our site. I noticed some language extensions included in the CMS. Could someone give an explanation of how the translation works? Also, do they require a button to switch languages, or do they detect the user's preference?

Thanks in advance!

Gray Hamilton

Hello and welcome!

1.you'll find some general good advice on SEO at http://www.dnnsoftware.com/wiki/Page/...  -you can also find some good suggestions about the (relatively new) advancedurl provider at http://www.dnnsoftware.com/wiki/Page/... -things such as extensionless url's, canonical urls etc. all help with SEO

2. it's very easy - all skins must contain one pane called ContentPane, so even if a new skin is missing pane's that you previously used DNN can move the modules into that - it may mean you have some rearranging to do (e.g if the old skin had 10 panes and the new one had 3). New skins are easy to find (you can use the extension catalog to search the 400+ free opensource extensions and the contents of store.dnnsoftware.com http://www.dnnsoftware.com/Community/... ). One thing I would note is that Gravity is a responsive skin (which uses Bootstrap 2) - this means it's fluid and does a good job at resizing and showing/hiding elements based on resolution (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsi...) -if changing skin you may want to look for another with responsive design/bootstrap as they're often an easy way to get a site to work for mobile clients (i.e. phones/tablets) - DNN has additional support for device detection and redirecting to different pages/sites, but a responsive skin is often "good-enough"

3. That's expected - there are thousands of extensions so it's hard to decide what's right to be added (also having them separate means those teams can develop on their own schedules). Use the extension catalog as previously described and you can find one and deploy (i.e. download and install automatically) - alternatively go to https://dnnblog.codeplex.com/ and download it and then go to host->extensions, install extension wizard to install.

4. DNN ships with 5 different language translations provided by DNN Corporation (the stewards of the project) - these are for "static" localization i.e. the text you see on screen such as menus/labels/titles etc. When you install/enable a 2nd language flag selectors will appear (they default to the user's preference) which can be used to change between languages. DNN furthermore has support for "content" localization which allows you to create copies of existing pages in a new language and alter the content (there are also other content localization solutions available with their own pro's and con's)

BTW as you're new to DNN I would recommend taking a look at http://www.dnnsoftware.com/wiki/Page/... and http://www.dnnsoftware.com/videos (this page is very slow to load due to a bug we introduced earlier this week, but if you wait there are lots of useful videos)