We have earlier discussed about Web Deployment and Web Packaging quite a bit, today I wanted to dive into web.config transformation. If you would like to check out the other topics please read through the earlier blog posts below:

• Web Deployment with VS 2010 and IIS
• Web Packaging: Creating a Web Package using VS 2010

• Web Packaging: Creating web packages using MSBuild

• How does Web Deployment with VS 10 & MSDeploy Work?

• Installing Web Packages using Command Line

Usually web applications go through a chain of server deployments before being finally being deployed to production environment. Some of these environments can be Developer box (Debug), QA Server, Staging/Pre-Production, Production (Release). While transitioning between these environments various settings of the web application residing in web.config file change, some of these settings can be items like application settings, connection strings, debug flags, web services end points etc.

VS10’s new web.config transformation model allows you to modify your web.config file in an automated fashion during deployment of your applications to various server environments. To help command line based deployments, Web.Config transformation is implemented as an MSBuild task behind the scene hence you can simply call it even outside of deployment realm.

I will try to go through below steps to explain web.config transformation in detail

1. Creating a “Staging” Configuration on your developer box

2. Adding a “Staging” Web.Config Transform file to your project

3. Writing simple transforms to change developer box connection string settings into “Staging” environment settings

4. Generating a new transformed web.config file for “Staging” environment from command line

5. Generating a new transformed web.config file for “Staging” environment from VS UI

6. Understanding various available web.config Transforms and Locators

7. Using Web.config transformation toolset for config files in sub-folders within the project

Step 1: Creating a “Staging” Configuration on your developer box

Debug and Release build configurations are available by default within Visual Studio but if you would like to add more build configurations (for various server environments like “Dev”, “QA”, “Staging”, “Production” etc then you can do so by going to the Project menu Build --> Configuration Manager… Learn more about creating build configurations.

Step 2: Adding a “Staging” Web.Config Transform file to your project

One of the goals while designing web.config transformation was to make sure that the original runtime web.config file does not need to be modified to ensure that there would be no performance impacts and also to make sure that the design time syntax is not mixed with runtime syntax. To support this goal the concept of Configuration specific web.config files was introduced.

These web.config files follow a naming convention of web.configuration.config. For example the web.config files for various Visual Studio + Custom configurations will look as below:

Any new Web Application Project (WAP) created in VS10 will by default have Web.Debug.config and Web.Release.config files added to the project. If you add new configurations (e.g. “Staging”) or if you upgrade pre-VS10 projects to VS10 then you will have to issue a command to VS to generate the Configuration specific Transform files as needed.

To add configuration specific transform file (e.g. Web.Staging.Config) you can right click the original web.config file and click the context menu command “Add Config Transforms” as shown below:

On clicking the “Add Config Transform” command VS10 will detect the configurations that do not have a transform associated with them and will automatically create the missing transform files. It will not overwrite an existing transform file. If you do not want a particular configuration transform file then you can feel free to delete it off.

Note: In case of VB Web Application Projects the web.configuration.config transform files will not be visible till you enable the hidden file views as shown below:

The transform files are design time files only and will not be deployed or packaged by VS10. If you are going to xCopy deploy your web application it is advised that you should explicitly leave out these files from deployment just like you do with project (.csproj/.vbproj) or user (.user) files…

Note: These transform files should not be harmful even if deployed as runtime does not use them in any fashion and additionally ASP.NET makes sure that .config files are not browsable in any way.

Step 3: Writing simple transforms to change developer box connection string settings into “Staging” environment settings

Web.Config Transformation Engine is a simple XML Transformation Engine which takes a source file (your project’s original web.config file) and a transform file (e.g. web.staging.config) and produces an output file (web.config ready for staging environment).

The Transform file (e.g. web.staging.config ) needs to have XML Document Transform namespace registered at the root node as shown below:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<configuration xmlns:xdt="http://schemas.microsoft.com/XML-Document-Transform">
</configuration>

Note: The transform web.config file needs to be a well formed XML.

Inside the XML-Document-Transform namespace two new attributes are defined. These attributes are important to understand as they drive the XML Transformation Engine.

Transform – This attribute inside the Web.Staging.config informs the Transformation engine the way to modify web.config file for specific configuration (i.e. staging). Some examples of what Transforms can do are:

• Replacing a node

• Inserting a node

• Delete a node

• Removing Attributes

• Setting Attributes

Locator – This attribute inside the web.staging.config helps the Transformation engine to exactly pin-point the web.config node that the transform from web.staging.config should be applied to. Some examples of what Locators can do are:

• Match on value of a node’s attribute

• Exact XPath of where to find a node

• A condition match to find a node

Based on the above basic understanding let us try to transform connection string from original web.config file to match Staging environment’s connection string

Let us examine the original web.config file and identify the items to replace... Let’s assume that the original Web Config file’s connection string section looks as below:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<configuration>
  <connectionStrings>
    <add name="personalDB"
     connectionString="Server=DevBox; Database=personal; User Id=admin; password=P@ssw0rd" providerName="System.Data.SqlClient" />
    <add name="professionalDB"
     connectionString="Server=DevBox; Database=professional; User Id=admin; password=P@ssw0rd" providerName="System.Data.SqlClient" />
</connectionStrings>
....
....
</configuration>

NOTE: It is not advisable to keep connection string unencrypted in the web.config file, my example is just for demonstration purposes.

Let us assume that we would like to make following changes to web.config file when moving to staging environment

• For “personalDB” we would like to change the connectionString to reflect Server=StagingBox, UserId=admin, passoword=StagingPersonalPassword”

• For “professionalDB” we would like to change the connectionString to reflect Server=StagingBox, UserId=professional, passoword=StagingProfessionalPassword”

To make the above change happen we will have to open web.Staging.Config file and write the below piece of code

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<configuration xmlns:xdt="http://schemas.microsoft.com/XML-Document-Transform">
     <connectionStrings>
        <add name="personalDB"
          connectionString="Server=StagingBox; Database=personal; User Id=admin; password=StagingPersonalPassword"
          providerName="System.Data.SqlClient" xdt:Transform="Replace" xdt:Locator="Match(name)" />
        <add name="professionalDB"
         connectionString="Server=StagingBox; Database=professional; User Id=professional; password=StagingProfessionalPassword"
         providerName="System.Data.SqlClient" xdt:Transform="Replace" xdt:Locator="Match(name)"/>
       </connectionStrings>
</configuration>

The above syntax in web.staging.config has Transform and Locator attributes from the xdt namespace. If we analyze the connection string node syntax we can notice that the Transform used here is “Replace” which is instructing the Transformation Engine to Replace the entire node

Further if we notice the Locator used here is “Match” which is informing Transformation engine that among all the “configuration/connectionStrings/add” nodes that are found, pick up the node whose name attribute matches with the name attribute of <add> node in web.Staging.config.

Also if you notice web.Staging.config does not contain anything else but the connectionStrings section (i.e. it does not have <system.web> and various other sections that web.config file usually has, this is because of the fact that the Transformation Engine does not require a complete web.config file in web.staging.config. It does the merging for you thus saving you duplication of all the rest of the sections in web.config file.

Simplest Approach: If you do not mind replicating the entire web.config file in web.staging.config then you can certainly do so by copying the entire web.config content into web.staging.config and change the relevant nodes inside web.staging.config. In such a situation you will just have to put xdt:Transform="Replace" attribute on the topmost node (i.e. configuration) of web.staging.config. You will not need xdt:Locator attribute at all as you are replacing your entire web.config file with web.staging.config without Matching anything.

So far we have seen one Transform (i.e. Replace) and one Locator (i.e. Match), we will see various other Transforms and Locators further in the post but first let us understand how we can produce the Transformed web.config file for the Staging environment after using original web.config and web.staging.config.

Step 4: Generating a new transformed web.config file for “Staging” environment from command line

Open Visual Studio Command prompt by going to Start --> Program Files –> Visual Studio v10.0 –> Visual Studio tools –> Visual Studio 10.0 Command Prompt

Type “MSBuild “Path to Application project file (.csproj/.vbproj) ” /t:TransformWebConfig /p:Configuration=Staging" and hit enter as shown below:

Once the transformation is successful the web.config for the “Staging” configuration will be stored under obj -->Staging folder under your project root (In solution explorer you can access this folder by first un-hiding the hidden files) :

• In the solution explorer click the button to show hidden files
• Open the Obj folder

• Navigate to your Active configuration (in our current case it is “Staging”)

• You can find the transformed web.config there

You can now verify that the new staging web.config file generated has the changed connection string section.

Step 5: Generating a new transformed web.config file for “Staging” environment from VS UI

Right Click on your project and click Package –> Create Package

The Create Package step already does web.config transformation as one of its intermediate steps before creating a package and hence you should be able to find the transformed web.config file in the same place as described in Step 4

Step 6: Understanding various available web.config Transforms and Locators

xdt:Locators

The inbuilt xdt:Locators are discussed below.

• Match - In the provided syntax sample below the Replace transform will occur only when the name Northwind matches in the list of connection strings in the source web.config.Do note that Match Locator can take multiple attributeNames as parameters e.g. Match(name, providerName) ]

<connectionStrings>
     <add name="Northwind" connectionString="connectionString goes    here" providerName="System.Data.SqlClient" xdt:Transform="Replace" xdt:Locator="Match(name)" />
</connectionStrings>

·         Condition - Condition Locator will create an XPath predicate which will be appended to current element’s XPath. The resultant XPath generated in the below example is “/configuration/connectionStrings/add[@name='Northwind or @providerName=’ System.Data.SqlClient’ ]”

This XPath is then used to search for the correct node in the source web.config file

<connectionStrings>
      <add name="Northwind" connectionString="connectionString goes here" providerName="System.Data.SqlClient" xdt:Transform="Replace" xdt:Locator="Condition(@name=’Northwind or @providerName=’System.Data.SqlClient’)" />
</connectionStrings>

·         XPath- This Locator will support complicated XPath expressions to identify the source web.config nodes. In the syntax example we can see that the XPath provided will allow user to replace system.web section no matter where it is located inside the web.config (i.e. all the system.web sections under any location tag will be removed.)

<location path="c:\MySite\Admin" >
    <system.web xdt:Transform="RemoveAll" xdt:Locator="XPath(//system.web)">
    ...
    </system.web>
</location>

xdt:Transform

• Replace - Completely replaces the first matching element along with all of its children from the destination web.config (e.g. staging environment’s web.config file). Do note that transforms do not modify your source web.config file.
  <assemblies xdt:Transform="Replace">
      <add assembly="System.Core, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=B77A5C561934E089" />
  </assemblies>

·         Remove - Removes the first matching element along with all of its children
<assemblies xdt:Transform="Remove"></assemblies>

·         RemoveAll - Removes all the matching elements from the destination’s web.config (e.g. staging environment’s web.config file).

<connectionStrings>
    <add xdt:Transform="RemoveAll"/>
</connectionStrings>

·         Insert - Inserts the element defined in web.staging.config at the bottom of the list of all the siblings in the destination web.config (e.g. staging environment’s web.config file).

<authorization>
     <deny users="*" xdt:Transform="Insert"/>
</authorization>

·         SetAttributes - Takes the value of the specified attributes from the web.staging.config and sets the attributes of the matching element in the destination web.config. This Transform takes a comma separated list of attributes which need to be set. If no attributes are given to SetAttributes transform then it assumes that you would like to Set all the attributes present on the corresponding node in web.staging.config
<compilation batch="false"xdt:Transform="SetAttributes(batch)">

   …

   </compilation>

·         RemoveAttributes - Removes the specified attributes from the destination web.config (i.e. staging environment’s web.config file). The syntax example shows how multiple attributes can be removed.

<compilation xdt:Transform="RemoveAttributes(debug,batch)">
</compilation>

• InsertAfter (XPath) - Inserts the element defined in the web.staging.config exactly after the element defined by the specified XPath passed to “InsertAfter()” transform. In the syntax example the element <deny users="Vishal" />will be exactly inserted after the element <allow roles="Admins" /> in the destinationXML.

<authorization>
     <deny users="Vishal" xdt:Transform="InsertAfter(/configuration/system.web/authorization/allow[@roles='Admins'])” />

</authorization>

• InsertBefore (XPath) - Inserts the element defined in the web.staging.config exactly before the element defined by the specified XPath passed to “InsertBefore()” transform. In the syntax example the element <allow roles="Admins" />will be exactly inserted before the element <deny users="*" />in the destinationXML.

<authorization>
      <allow roles=" Admins" xdt:Transform="InsertBefore(/configuration/system.web/authorization/ deny[@users='*'])" />
</authorization>

Some advanced points to note:

• If the Transformation Engine does not find a xdt:Transform attribute specified on a node in web.staging.config file then that node is ignored for Transformation and the Tranformation engine moves ahead traversing the rest of the web.staging.config.

• A xdt:Transform attribute on a parent can very easily impact child elements even if there is no Transform specified for child e.g. If xdt:Transform=”Replace” is put on <system.web> then everything underneath <system.web> node will be replaced with the content from web.staging.config

• It is completely valid to place xdt:Locators attributes on arbitrary nodes inside web.staging.config just for filtering purposes. xdt:Locator does not need to be accompanied with xdt:Transform attribute. (great example here is <location> tag which might just be used for filtering… The example code here would be:

<location path="c:\MySite\Admin" xdt:Locator="Match(path)">>
        <system.web>
          ... Bunch of transforms written under here will
          .... only apply if location path = C:\MySite\Admin
        </system.web>
</location>

Step 7: Using Web.config transformation toolset for config files in sub-folders within the project

All of the above discussion directly applies to any web.config file present in sub folders of your project (e.g. if you have a separate web.config file for say “Admin” folder then VS 10 will support transforms for them too). You can add transform files within sub-folders and use the same packaging functionality mentioned in all of the above steps to create transformed web.config files for web.config files specific to the sub folders within your project.

I think this has become a rather long post; but I hope it helps!!

Vishal R. Joshi | Program Manager | Visual Studio Web Developer

Today I want to advance our discussions around Web Deployment in Visual Studio 10…  To catch up on the previous discussions in this series check out:

So I was visiting with a friend last night, and he indicated that he was having a bit of a problem with his WSS 3.0 installation.  Short story is that he has a dedicated Win2k8 box acting as a web server on his domain for internal sites.  They have several web-based LOB apps that run on that box, all as virtual directories under the default web site.  Even though they are running SBS 2003 with its WSS 2.0 companyweb, they wanted to install WSS 3 to take advantage of the new wiki site template.  So, they installed WSS 3 on the web server, which immediately broke their LOB apps.

So what happened?

When you first install WSS 3.0 and run the SharePoint Configuration Wizard, SharePoint creates a new web application (SharePoint – 80) and creates a new web site in IIS that takes over the default site.  Dana recognized this, so within IIS he edited the bindings for the SharePoint site to use port 81, allowing him to re-enable the original default website in IIS and get his LOB apps back.  The problem?  Not only was it a pain having to enter :81 after the servername to access the site, but clicking links on the SharePoint site continued to want to use port 80, resulting in constant 404 errors.

So how did we fix it?

If you’re new to SharePoint, it is worth taking a little time to explain some of the architecture and terminology around SharePoint 3.0 to help put the answer in to context.  First, it is important to understand the distinction between a SharePoint web application, and an IIS web site.  SharePoint (whether WSS or MOSS) can have multiple web applications.  These are created via SharePoint Central Administration.  You can think of a SharePoint Web Application as your top-level SharePoint site – but it is distinctly different from a website in IIS.  An IIS site that is mapped to a SharePoint web application can be thought of as a gateway to access the SharePoint web application.  You can delete the site from IIS without affecting any of the content in the SharePoint application.  (Obviously you won’t be able to access the SharePoint web application without an IIS site, but none of the SharePoint web application content or configuration is stored in the IIS site). 

There are several benefits to this approach – including the ability to have multiple IIS sites mapped to a single web application, with each site being bound by a different SharePoint security zone.  The distinction between the web application and the IIS site in Dana’s situation is that the original IIS site that was bound to port 80 with no host header was separate from the actual SharePoint web application, and even though that was the initial IIS site created to access the SharePoint web application, it isn’t necessary to use that IIS site.

The simplest solution for Dana was to create a new IIS site that used a host header to access his SharePoint web application.  This is actually very simple and straight-forward to do from within SharePoint Central Administration:

1. Open SharePoint Central Administration  (Start | Administrative Tools | SharePoint 3.0 Central Administration) on your SharePoint server.
2. Click on the Application Management tab
3. Click on the link to Create or Extend an Existing Web Application
4. Click the link to Extend an Existing Web Application  (we are extending an existing web application to another IIS site)
5. Select the web application you want to extend.  (The default SharePoint web application on a stand-alone WSS installation is SharePoint – 80.  On SBS 2008, the companyweb application is  remote.yourdomain.com:987  )
6. Select the option to create a new website and enter a description that is meaningful to you  (this will display in IIS)
7. Change the port to 80
8. Enter a value for the host header  (in Dana’s case, we used   wiki  - obviously, you will need to create the necessary DNS records so your host header name can be resolved via your internal DNS.  I personally prefer to create a CNAME (alias) that resolves to the host (server) that is running SharePoint.  Alternately, you could also create a new A record).
9. In a typical small business deployment, you will accept the default security configuration options
10. Select the appropriate zone and click OK.

This will create a new site in IIS that is mapped to the web application you selected.  After we had created the new site for Dana and created the necessary CNAME record for  wiki  in his DNS, we were able to browse to http://wiki on his internal systems and access the SharePoint application successfully, and navigate without 404 errors.

Additionally, we were able to delete the original IIS site that Dana had changed the bindings to port 81.  Since Dana & co were now accessing the web application via the new site (http://wiki) we didn’t need the original site on port 81 any more.  We also did this within SharePoint central administration:

1. Go to the Application Management tab
2. Click the link to Remove SharePoint from IIS Web Site
3. Select the web application
4. Select the site
5. Optionally select to delete the site from IIS  (which we did select in Dana’s case)

So why was Dana getting the 404 errors after he changed the bindings to a new port number in IIS?  If you go back to the page where we extended the web application, take note of the description under the Load Balanced URL section:

The description reads:  “The load balanced URL is the domain name for all sites users will access in this SharePoint Web application.  This URL domain will be used in all links shown on pages within the web application.  By default, it is set to the current servername and port.”

When the SharePoint Configuration Wizard created the initial web site in IIS, the SharePoint load balanced URL for that site was http://servername:80  -  which will resolve to the default website on that server.  When Dana changed the port to 81 and re-enabled the original default website, links in the SharePoint web application (when accessed from the original IIS site) all used the Load Balanced URL, which resolved to the re-enabled default website on port 80 – thus resulting in the 404 errors.

The moral of the story here?  Well there are a couple:

• You can have as many IIS sites linked to a single SharePoint web application as you want.
• When administering SharePoint, do as much as you can in SharePoint Central Administration.  Chances are you won’t get the results you want if you try to make changes (such as site bindings) via IIS.

One of my personal rules when it comes to IIS is to leave the default website alone.  Personally, I always create new websites in IIS and use host headers to access those sites – so everything is accessible on port 80 (assuming http) and users don’t have to remember weird port numbers, etc.  Additionally, using host headers gives you the freedom to move websites to different web servers without affecting the end-user experience.  Just update your DNS record for the host header value to point to the new server and voila! – users are accessing the same site via the same URL and have no idea it has been moved to a different physical box.  And this is true of all web applications I use – DotNetNuke, Community Server, etc. 

The only exception to my rule of putting each web application in their own IIS web site is when we need multiple apps all on the same server accessible via SSL.  Since SSL traffic is encrypted, IIS is unable to inspect the host headers, meaning it can only direct SSL requests to the correct site based on the IP / port combination.  So, to have multiple web apps on a single box accessible via SSL, we either need to have multiple sites all on one IP listening on different ports (443, 444, etc.), or multiple IPs on the box so each site can listen on 443 on a separate IP, OR configure the different web applications as virtual directories under one IIS site that is listening on 443 for the one / all IP addresses.  Depending on the number of applications you need accessible via SSL, it can makes more sense to configure those apps as virtual directories under a single site, so you reduce your administrative overhead by not having to administer multiple IP addresses / ports / SSL certificates.   But even then, I create a new site in IIS to put everything under instead of using the default site.  Yeah, I know – I’m weird like that 

Of course – there is always more than one way to skin a cat, so there is a completely different method we could have taken to fix Dana’s issue as well.

Let’s say there was a business need for Dana’s web applications (that were all virtual directories under the default site) to be accessible as virtual directories under his SharePoint site.   This approach was actually recommended to Dana by other individuals telling him to add an Application Exclusion to the SharePoint site.  Dana couldn’t find out how to do this – but there is good reason why:  Application Exclusions don’t exist in SharePoint 3.0.

Here’s the deal:  SharePoint 2.0 and 3.0 have considerable distinctions in their architecture.  For example, when you extended SharePoint 2.0 to a website in IIS, SharePoint assumed that the entire IIS site would be devoted to the SharePoint application.  As a result, if you wanted to have non-SharePoint virtual directories under the IIS site, you had to tell SharePoint 2.0 to exclude those virtual directories from its management, allowing the web applications in those virtual directories to work as intended. 

SharePoint 3.0 uses a different approach.  Instead of assuming the entire IIS site is devoted to the SharePoint web application, you have to explicitly tell SharePoint what paths in the IIS site are managed by SharePoint.  When we create a new SharePoint Web Application, SharePoint assumes that it will manage the root path as well as everything below the /sites/ path.  (Hint: when you create a new web application and are on the Create Site Collection page, this is why you have the to options for the URL:  http://hostheader/  or http://hostheader/sites/ )

What this means is that SharePoint 3.0 plays very nicely with other web applications in the same IIS site.  So in Dana’s case, when he first installed SharePoint 3.0 and it created a new IIS site that replaced his original default website, he could have simply recreated the virtual directories for each of his web based LOB apps under the IIS site SharePoint created as long as none of them used the sites name, since that was defined as a Managed Path for the SharePoint web application.  And even then, if he wanted to use the sites path for a non-SharePoint application instead, he could have removed the sites path from SharePoint management.

You can administer SharePoint’s managed paths from SharePoint Central Administration.  Simply navigate to the Application Management tab and click the link for Define Managed Paths.  When you add a managed path, you specify what type of inclusion it will be.  There are two types of inclusions – an explicit inclusion and a wildcard inclusion.  An explicit inclusion means that SharePoint will manage just that path, where as a wildcard inclusion tells SharePoint that every path under the wildcard inclusion path should be managed.  This is particularly useful if you are enabling self-site creation for users, so they could effectively create their own site collections (top-level SharePoint site) under a common directory (e.g /sites/). 

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What is web hosting? Whenever you visit a website, what you see on your web browser is essentially just a web page that is downloaded from the web server onto your web browser. In general, a web site is made up of many web pages. And a web page is basically composed of texts and graphic images. All these web pages need to be stored on the web servers so that online users can visit your website.

Therefore, if you plan to own a new website, you will need to host your website on a web server. When your website goes live on the web server, online users can then browse your website on the Internet. Company that provides the web servers to host your website is called web hosting providers.

A well-established web hosting provider sometimes hosts up to thousands of websites. For example, iPowerWeb is a popular web hosting company that hosts more than 300,000 websites. For that reason, a web hosting company need many web servers (essentially, these are computers) to ?store? the website. And all these web servers are connected to the Internet through high speed Internet connection and housed in a physical building called ?data center?. In order to guarantee all the web servers are safe, secure and fully operational all time, a data center is a physically secure 24/7 environment with fire protection, HVAC temperature control, virus detections, computer data backup, redundant power backup and complete disaster recovery capabilities.

What are the different types of web hosting? There are different kinds of web hosting companies out there with different characteristics. The main types of web hosts can be organized into the following categories:

To continue, go to A Beginners Guide to Web Hosting article.

NB: A lot of other great web hosting services articles are available at http://web-hosting.info-and-tips.com

Web Deployment has taken a huge stride in Visual Studio 2010.   I have started a blog series where I have written about web deployment, you can read more about them below:

This is how you can use web packages on any machine with MSDeploy and by configuring your deployment options in the destination manifest you can go and and easily recreate your webs.

It is not possible for someone to come up with every possible provider that everyone needs so there will be an extensibility model by which you can write your own providers and register it with MSDeploy engine.

Visual Studio is also made extensible to allow you to hook into the packaging and publishing process to call your custom MSDeploy providers in the source manifest.

The most interesting pieces is that with IIS Manager and Visual Studio 2010 UI, you will not really need to know all these details, things will just work but I thought it is often interesting to know how things work behind the scenes.

I hope this conceptual overview helps you get the perspective on how web deployment with VS 2010 and MSDeploy will work!!

Vishal R. Joshi | Program Manager | Visual Studio Web Developer

Design your site for traffic :

What better way to start the new year than with more traffic to your web site. Web traffic is a critical part of your internet business and it is imperative that you design it to bring you the most amount of traffic possible.

Designing your site for traffic includes offering good content, easy navigation and a logical flow. Additionally you must also build your site to draw traffic from the search engines because if you can obtain high search engine ranking, you can enjoy free traffic.

It's important to note, however that good ranking won't do you much good without a well designed site and a well designed site can't bring you visitors if no one knows it's there. Both high ranking and good design need to work together.

How do we pull all this together? Let's take a look.

Design your site for traffic : A word about Design

A huge mistake I see many website owners make is that they get caught up in making their site cute. They love the little animations, buttons and dramatic backgrounds. What they fail to consider is that these things are worthless if you
don't offer good content, easy navigation and a logical flow.

First of all don't try to be everything to everyone. Design your site around a theme, preferably a niche theme. Don't confuse your readers with links all over the page. Design a logical flow.
Lead your viewers to where you would like them to go. Leave plenty of white space and keep your pages organized. Clearly state at the top of your pages what you are about and what you would like your viewers to do.

Secondly, I don't recommend pop-ups. I find that the majority of internet users find them annoying. The demand for pop-up blockers is a good indication that viewers don't want to see them.

Thirdly, offer good content. Provide information on your site that will help viewers solve a problem. Offer information that they might not get elsewhere. Write reviews regarding your products. Write newsletters and articles and most importantly offer something of value for free. Give your viewers a reason to come back. It will also build trust in you.

Design your site for traffic : Traffic builders

Good search engine ranking can bring lots of visitors to your site. It often takes a few months to rank well but the payoff is lots of qualified traffic. While it's not practical to depend solely on search engines for traffic it can complement your other advertising campaigns nicely. Aiming for high search engine placement is always a plus. Keep these in mind when developing your site for the search engines:

Design your site for traffic -Domain names

Choose a domain name that has your site keywords in it. For example, if you're a site about pet care, try to include the words "pet care" or words related to pet care in your domain name if you can.

Design your site for traffic -Keywords

Keywords require research and there are several tools to help you out in this area. Here are my favorites:

http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/
http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/

I suggest focusing on only one keyword or keyword phrase per page of your website. This may not seem like a lot but if your site has 20 pages you can focus on 20 keywords. Each page should be considered a landing page for your site.
If you have proper navigation on your pages it will easily allow viewers to see everything you have to offer.

Include your keyword or keyword phrase at the top of your page as well as in at least one header phrase. Also work the keywords into the body of your text as often as you can without sounding redundant.

Your keywords should be in the Title tag as well as in your page description tag. Many search engines no longer look at the keyword tags but I recommend using them and including the plural forms as well.

Design your site for traffic - Alt Tags

Search engines don't index images, therefore any text on your site that is presented in image format won't get indexed. To solve this problem, you can enter the image description in the ALT tag. To be sure that the search engines recognize all the content on your site, fill in your ALT tags with
your keywords. This will boost your keyword frequency and help your site achieve better ranking.

Design your site for traffic - Linking

Search engines will rate your site by who is linking to your site, so it's important to establish quality, related links. This can be accomplished in a few ways. One way is to establish reciprocal links with other like sites. When exchanging links be sure to include your keywords in your site title.

Review the page you are exchanging links with. Be sure it is a site that you find easy to navigate and informative. I also recommend that the site's index page have a Google PR rating of at least one. This ensures that the site is not being penalized by Google. If it is a penalized site then you could be penalized as well for linking to it.
Include a 'tell a friend' and 'bookmark' script on your site. This gives viewers an easy way to bookmark you and most of all return to your site.

- Include a Site Map

Site Maps let visitors know what information you have, how it's organized, where it is located with respect to other information, and how to get to that information with the least amount of clicks possible.

Site maps also provide spider food for search engine robots. This can increase your chances of becoming indexed because a site map allows the search engines to easily visit every page of your site.

A site map works best if you include a link to your site map in the navigation of every page on your site.

Finally, don't let your site become stale. I have found that my search engine rankings improve when I periodically add new pages to my site and keep the content new and fresh. Follow these tips and 2005 may be your year for traffic.

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Web Slices are a cool new feature in Internet Explorer 8! With Web Slices, users can add little snippets of the web to the favorites bar and monitor their updates. Web Slices were introduced in a previous post here.  In this post, I want to walk you through creating a dynamic Web Slice in as little as 5 minutes!

What is a dynamic Web Slice?

Dynamic Web Slices use an Alternative Display Source (not to be confused with Alternative Update Source). As the name suggests, the content displayed in the preview actually comes from a ?live? web page which the Web Slice points to.  They are an addition based on feedback from the Beta 1 release of Internet Explorer and facilitate styling and cookie handling for authentication. A key advantage is that the web page is rendered in the preview window without losing any styling elements or active content. Hosting active content was not possible with static slices (Web Slices not using alternative display source). Static slices generate a preview of the sanitized entry-content element cached by the Windows RSS Platform which is stripped of script and other active content. Here is an example of a dynamic Web Slice from Live Search which has the display source pointing to a page on www.live.com rather than displaying cached content from the RSS store.

Web Slices using Alternative Display Source also make it easy for web developers to enable authentication within the preview window itself as well as have their customers protected against common internet security vulnerabilities such as Phishing and identity theft. Later this week we will be posting more details about Web Slice authentication. 

Moreover, a dynamic Web Slice is easy (and fun!) to create! So, set the clock for 5 minutes and let?s go right into making one!

Creating a ?live display? Web Slice

Let?s start with this basic template WebSlice.htm ?

<html>
<head>
<title>Web Slice Example</title>
</head>
<body>
    <div class="hslice" id="SliceID">
        <span class="entry-title">Slice Title</span>
        <a rel="entry-content" href="LivePreviewPage.htm" style="display:none;"></a>
        <span class="entry-content"> This content will appear on the page from where the user add?s the slice, but not in the preview window</span>
        <span class="ttl" style="display:none;">15</span>
        <a rel="bookmark" href="LivePreviewPage.htm" style="display:none;"></a>
    </div>
</body>
</html>

The class hslice helps Internet Explorer identify this snippet as a Web Slice. Fill in the template with the Web Slice id and title. Both are required properties. The title is displayed on the Favorites bar when the user adds the Web Slice.

The link tag?s entry-content attribute specifies the alternative display web page which is the source of the content displayed in the preview window of the Web Slice. This is where the RSS platform will look to see if anything has changed. The URL of the alternative display page is displayed in the navigation band at the bottom of the preview window.

The ttl property is optional and sets the default sync schedule for the Web Slice. This time can be modified to a higher value by the user. The user can hit the refresh button on the navigation band to refresh the alternative display web page within the preview window.

The optional bookmark property can be used to navigate to the alternative display web page (or any other page) when the user clicks on the Go arrow on the navigation band. The page is then opened in the current tab in the browser.

That?s it! You?re done! Wasn?t that super easy?

Serving ?live? content

A few key things to note here -

As per the sync schedule, the Windows RSS Platform will ping WebSlice.htm, not LivePreviewPage.htm (the display source).

1. If there is any change in WebSlice.htm, a fresh copy of WebSlice.htm is fetched. When the user clicks on the Web Slice, the current copy of LivePreviewPage.htm is served and cached.
2. If there is no change to the title and entry-content property of WebSlice.htm, when the user clicks on the Web Slice, the previously cached copy of LivePreviewPage.htm is served. In this case, there could be inconsistency between the preview window display and the actual web page.

In both cases, if the user manually hits refresh, the current copy of LivePreviewPage.htm is displayed and cached. Thus, here are a few tips in order to ensure that the content in the preview window is ?live? -

• Update WebSlice.htm for changes to reflect in accordance with the set sync schedule.
• If you want to make sure that the user always sees a ?live? copy of LivePreviewPage.htm every time she clicks on the Web Slice add the no-cache Cache Control header to LivePreviewPage.htm. This will ensure that the display in the preview window is always consistent with the actual LivePreviewPage.htm.
• You can also change the title on WebSlice.htm to update with the sync schedule. This is especially useful if you want to display the updated temperature in the title bar for a weather Web Slice.
• Another optional property you can use is endtime. This specifies the expiration time of a Web Slice. For example, it can be used to indicate an expired item for an auction Web Slice.

Design a usable dynamic Web Slice

Dynamic Web Slices retain all the styles from the preview web page, including those inherited from external stylesheets and look just like the actual web pages. However, there are a few things to bear in mind ?

1. The default size for dynamic Web Slices is 320x240. We strongly recommend that you design your Web Slices to conform to this size. Users do have the option of manually resizing a Web Slice for their convenience, but we wouldn?t like to compel them to do so in order to see all your content.
2. Another consideration to bear in mind is performance. We encourage you to leverage the functionality available with dynamic Web Slices, but to make sure that it renders in less than 500ms to keep the preview window usable.
3. While users are able to navigate within the preview window itself, it is not encouraged to host navigations to complex pages. The preview window has stricter security restrictions and blocks dialogs, the Information bar, popups etc.  Moreover, Web Slices are a great way to attract users to your actual web site and you can explicitly set links in preview windows to open in a new tab in the browser by using the target="_blank" attribute. Note that cross zone navigations from the preview window are blocked.

<a href="http://www.example.com" target="_blank">This link will open in the new tab in the browser</a>

The Web Slice Style Guide has a section on Web Slices using Alternative Display Source containing great tips to make your Web Slices look pretty!

You can see how simple and useful they can be! I hope that you will have fun creating really neat Web Slices for your web pages. The IE 8 Gallery has a ton of great Web Slices along with other IE add-ons.

Ritika Virmani
Program Manager
Internet Explorer  - Web Slices and Navigation

by Stoney deGeyter

Because of persistent manipulation of on-page "optimization" search engines had to look to other ways of measuring site quality. Enter link algorithms. But links can be manipulated too so it became not just a battle of numbers but a battle of quality. Quality is much more difficult to achieve and requires a lot more work. Some of the best link building strategies you can employ are those involved in building quality content and improving your site for your visitors. These things alone can do wonders in getting people to link to you.

Below are some questions and statements presented to me regarding links. I have provided my thoughts and input that will hopefully give you additional input or confirmation of what you already believed to be correct.

The number of links to a page is important in determining search ranking.

The number of links is a factor, but certainly not the only, or even the most important factor. The PageRank algorithm was essentially built for calculating the number of links to a page and included measurements for valuing links based on the value of the site (as determined by the number of incoming links) doing the linking. But once that started being manipulated other factors had to come into play as well.

It's easy to go out and spam-generate thousands of links, but those are worthless to the visitor and are not a reflection of the quality of the site. So Google and other engines had to start putting quality metrics into the link algorithms to ensure that the quality of the link was more important than just a basic link count.

Links from authoritative sites are the best.

Yes. If you can secure a link from an "authoritative" site, that'll work more in your favor than a link from any other average site. But the location of the link, what page it is on, how it's used are also a factor. If you get a link from an authority site on a page that is deemed to be of little or no value that won't play much in your favor. If you get a site-wide footer link, or advertising link, those can be devalued completely by the search engines. If you get a textual link on a page that gets good traffic and the page itself has a good amount of incoming links, then you have a very valuable link pointing to your site.

Links form sites that are relevant to your site topic are better than irrelevant links.

This is absolutely right. If you can get an on-topic link from an on-topic sight or blog post this will provide much more value than a link that is on a completely irrelevant site. Links from unrelated sites generally won't serve much purpose to the site's visitors nor will they generate much traffic. You're always better off getting links from places where the link will generate traffic.

Anchor text should have your keywords in them.

Yes, but don't go out and get hundreds or thousands of links that all have the same anchor text. That's simply not natural. If you have control over the link text then mix it up a bit. You can say "red trucks," "trucks come in red," "red and yellow trucks," etc. If you were to get 100 links from 100 different sites via natural means, what are the odds that all of those links would read exactly the same?

Links on a page with many outgoing links are rated lower than links on a page with few.

The value of each link on a page diminishes based on the number of other outgoing links on that page. For the sake of simplicity, lets say that a page has a total of 100 points of link value it can pass. If there is one link on that page then all 100 points are transferred to the page its linking to. If two links are on the page then each link passes 50 points. If a page has 100 links, each link passes one point.

Links from older pages are better than links form new pages. (Does older mean the amount of time the page has been hosted or indexed?)

I'm not sure how much the age of the page has to do with the value of the link. It seems that in standard page content brand new links have to age (like wine) in order to reach full maturity in value. However, the opposite seems to be true with blog posts, where links in new blog posts seem to have much more value than older blog posts.

But what also factors in is the value of the page based on historical trends. If the linking page's value increases over time because people keep linking to it then that will increase the value of all links pointing off the page. However if that page remains stagnant with no new incoming links and relatively no traffic then the value of the link juice being passes will probably not improve.

The age of a page would start from the time the search engines found the page, not when it was first hosted.

Reciprocal links are ranked slightly lower than one way links.

Define a reciprocal link. Many sites (usually blogs) link back and forth not out of some quid pro quo but because of the value of the content being posted. Does this make these links reciprocal? Why would a search engine devalue those links just because they have linked to each other naturally like that?

On the other hand if you are building reciprocal link pages then yes, those will be devalued. Mostly because those pages provide little value to the visitors anyway and if the search engines can spot them they will take that into account.

Does it hurt or help my page to have outgoing links? Does it matter what those links are to?

Who you link to has a profound impact on your site. If you link to other sites of authority then you are telling the search engines that you know where the valuable content is related to your industry, and you want to provide your visitors access to that content. You're essentially associating yourself with that site.

That can also work against you. If you link to garbage sites, you're associating yourself with garbage. That will serve to decrease your site's value, especially if you continue to hold and/or build those junk associations.

Is any link better than no link? What about a link from a low ranking page whose topic is not relevant to mine and who liked to my page with bad anchor text? Is it better to not have it at all? Does it depend on anchor text? For example if it was a link from a low ranking irrelevant page but had good anchor text would that make the difference between it being worth having or not?

In some cases I would say that you're better off with no link. As much as you want to be careful about the sites you associate yourself with through linking, you also don't want to be associated with junk sites by them linking to you. In most circumstances, those sites linking to you will not hurt you. But if you are reciprocating then it most certainly will. If you have an opportunity to get a non-relevant link on a non-relevant page in a non-relevant site with very low rankings and bad anchor text, I'd pass. The time it takes to say "please link to me" is costing you ROI. Now if you get that link through no effort of your own, then just don't worry about it.

Is it ever worth having a link with bad anchor text?

Any link will pass value . The anchor text uses is an added bonus that will let the search engines see what people are saying about your site. If you get a thousand links that say "your site sucks" you just gained 1000 links that will in all likelihood work in your favor. At least in terms of the value measured by the search engines. They'll work against you with the visitors.

All links are not created equal. Some can work against you (bad outgoing links) and others will work for you a little or a lot. You can't always control what happens outside of your site or manage who links to you and how, but you can manage your own site. This makes linking out extremely crucial to your link building efforts. Don't engage in pointless reciprocal linking or link to sites that you wouldn't want to visit yourself. If you make it attractive and compelling then you're more than halfway to your goal on creating an effective link building strategy that will pay off.

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Hi guys, sorry about the lack of updates, but I think this post should give you an idea of what's going on with our business ventures, and where this blog comes into the mix.

So far, things are going very well. We have been brainstorming loads of fresh ideas, and working hard to polish our original plans. While doing this, I've had a few thoughts about what the internet really is.

The web is a giant garden.

From the perspective of a web entrepreneur, I think this is a perfect analogy. Think of yourself as Mr. Green Thumb. When you make a website, you are essentially planting a seed. Over time, depending on how much you take care of it, that seed will grow into a plant. Of course, this plant earns you revenue, so the larger and healthier it is, the better. The more time you spend taking care of your plant, the better it will turnout. The nicer your plant, the more people will come see it, and maybe even pay admission. Of course, there are other factors as well... perhaps a bad subject keywords is your salted soil, and a plant cannot grow in that area of your garden. So start by looking for fertile lands!

So, what is our game plan? We have a couple of ideas that we believe may be absolute winners and have massive potential; however, they take a long time to create, design, and perfect so that they can even reach that potential. So for a while, we are going to be planting some other seeds which need time to grow before becoming nice plants. Then, while developing our large projects, we will have other plants sprouting.

What I think is the most important thing to remember is that virtually all websites need time to grow, so maybe before starting that colossal project you're banking your success on, maybe do a little investigating on other smaller, less time consuming projects you can start before, or concurrently, to give them the time they need to grow. Who knows, you may end up with a few much bigger plants that you imagined!

Well as you can see, until our seeds are planted, it's kind of difficult to bring you interesting finds about earning money on the web. Rest assured though that once a few sprouts pop up, we'll have plenty more to talk about!

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by Stoney deGeyter

Website architecture is one of the most important aspects of creating a search engine friendly website. Below are just a few questions I was asked recently on the topic of navigation, site structure, site maps and pages site.

If I have a relatively small [site] with a flat/linear file structure and each page has links on it to every other page that the spiders can follow does it benefit me at all to have a site map?

If you only have a five to ten page site where every page is of equal value to the rest then a site map is unnecessary. However once you get beyond that, or begin having pages that are sub-pages of a section of your site it's a good idea to create a site map. Even if all the pages are represented in the navigation the site map will help the user know what information your site contains without having to go look for it.

One primary benefit of the site map is that it gives the visitor a birds-eye view of the entire site. In most instances, the navigation itself won't accomplish this, though it can depending on how it's laid out. But even still, if the visitor looking for a site map does so because they perceive an inability to find something that your site should have. It provides them with a complete picture. They know if they cannot find it on the site map then there is no need to keep looking through the rest of the site.

If I have a relatively small site is there any benefit for ranking by having a silo or pyramid structure rather than a flat structure? Do the spiders always prefer silo structures or does it only make a difference if the site if it is over a certain number of pages and if so what is that number?

I think in this case you defer to the visitor over the search engine. Organize your pages in a way that makes sense and will help the visitor easily find the information they are looking for. There is nothing wrong with silo-ing your site structure, even for small sites. Just make sure you're not adding additional layers for the sake of adding layers. Create a structure that makes sense from the visitor perspective. If you do that then it will make sense from the search engine perspective as well.

Do the robots really produce a 404 error if they can't find a robot text file on my site and should I make one just for that reason even if its a small site that otherwise wouldn't need it?

Anytime a search engine comes to your site (at least those who honor the robots.txt protocol) will search for the robots.txt file. Generally, not having a robots.txt file won't hurt you in any way but I do recommend adding one anyway.

Without the file in place the search engines can interpret that any way they want. Mostly it will tell them that your site is either completely open or forbidden. If you have the file in place you are letting the engines know that you have made a definitive declaration of what they can and cannot do in regards to spidering the site.

I have heard that pages should not be more that 100 or 150 k. Is that true? Does it affect ranking besides obviously affecting download times? Is k the same as kb (I know I could probably figure that one out)? How can I tell how big my pages are?

Its always best to keep your code as streamlined as possible. I don't think there is a hard and fast rule anymore as to how big a page can be, however if the engines are finding pages that have significantly more code than content then it very well may have a negative effect. Large pages with lots of content generally won't be a problem, but if the content to code ration is skewed too far toward code, then that represents an issue that's worth fixing. If too many of these pages exist on your site then its highly likely that many of your pages won't get fully spidered and/or many pages of your site could be left out of the index.

Typically when referring to file size someone might say 150k when they mean 150 kb. However if they say it's 150k kb then that suggests its 150 thousand kb. Just about any web file manager such as dreamweaver can tell you how big the page is. If the file is saved on your computer you can also look at the file size through windows explorer. When considering page size, search engines generally are just looking at the code, not necessarily at any additional downloadable items on the page (images, flash files, etc.)

I use iweb to make my site and it is limited in some things that it can do. It uses iframes to inset html content (or you can mess with it yourself). The way I understand it the frames are actually an entirely separate page that is imposed on top of the page you put it on. I have heard frames are bad for search rankings are these frames the same as iframes.

I don't have any experience with iweb so I can't answer any question in regards to that. Traditionally frames are not a good way to go for a site, but there are many ways to have the benefit of frames, without actually having frames. For one, if you need separate scrolling areas, this can be accomplished with CSS. For another, if you want to have one file for navigation instead of putting the same navigation code on every page, the use of server side includes (SSI) is the way to go. Includes allow you to create one file then globally include that file throughout the site. Update that one file and every page that pulls the include file in shows the updated information.

These questions are just a drop in the bucket of what you need to know regarding site architecture and navigation. But I do hope you they provided you with some valuable insight. I have answered a number of other website architecture questions in the past that will give you even more information on this topic. You can also check out my architecture checklist.

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