Posts from "2013"

Back in version 2.0.8 we added the LESS ​stylesheet compiler to Exponent.  LESS is a dynamic stylesheet language which extends CSS with dynamic behavior such as variables, ​mixins, operations and functions.  This functionality makes it much easier to create flexible stylesheets since redundant styles and style variations can be handled by the compiler/server instead of the designer.  Though this addition to Exponent was primarily to support Twitter-Bootstrap, its use is increasing especially beginning with v2.2.3.

In this article our focus is on creating or updating .less stylesheets.  For information on how to incorporate .less style sheets into your custom theme, module, or view, please see this help doc.  The use of .less stylesheets in place of .css stylesheets is transparent within Exponent.  

In version 2.2.3 we convert all our core css stylesheets to .less, since we now also have custom 'mixins' to do some of the heavy lifting.  Mixins allow you to tie a bunch of properties and customizable values all into one nice little package.  Here’s an example:

/* Mixin */
.box-shadow (@x: 0px, @y: 3px, @blur: 5px, @color: #333) {
  -webkit-box-shadow: @x @y @blur rgba(0, 0, 0, @color);
  -moz-box-shadow: @x @y @blur rgba(0, 0, 0, @color);
  box-shadow: @x @y @blur rgba(0, 0, 0, @color);
}

This takes all of the box-shadow code needed for display on multiple browsers and wraps it up nicely into a single mixin that can be implemented with custom values (or the defaults that we used above). Now, instead of writing a huge chunk of code every time you want a box-shadow, this is all you need:

/* Implementation */
.somediv {
  .box-shadow(5px, 5px, 6px, #eee);
}

Pretty awesome right? When this code is compiled automatically by Exponent, it’ll create a the appropriate CSS stylesheet. You get a much more readable code without sacrificing browser compatibility.

In v2.2.3 we include a custom 'mixins' file which is located in /framework/core/assets/less/exponent.less.  This mixn may be included in your .less file by adding the following line to the top.

 @import '/framework/core/assets/less/exponent.less'

Here are some of the mixins found in exponent.less:

• .border-radius and .border-radius-custom
• .box-shadow and .drop-shadow
• .gradient and .quick-gradient
• .reflect
• .opacity

Take a look at exponent.less to see all the included mixins, plus some implementation samples.

I think you'll appreciate how LESS can make your work 'more' productive and will consider using it in your next project.

While v2.2.3 (when released) will focus on addressing issues in v2.2.2 and removing all the deprecated features and 0.9x compatibility, there will be a few minor new features and changes to the permissions system (final implementation will be based on your feedback to this article!).

New features include adding a 'copy' item command to the portfolio module, adding an optional 'force image resize' during a quick upload, and better theme support for mobile devices by use of optional 'touch' icons and the 'meta viewport' tag.  We may also be able to squeeze in a 'multi-day' feature to the event module along with external calendar (ical & google xml) feed caching.

However, the bigger changes will be to user/group permissions.  This will be accomplished by the addition of group global permissions (restrictions) and changing the way we deal with the 'create' permission.

Group Global Permissions - This new feature provides greater control over what basic users are allowed to do (or more accurately 'are prevented from doing').  These restrictions will be implemented within a 'User Group', therefore the 'user' must be assigned to a 'group' in order to enforce these 'global permissions'.  However, this method will ensure that upgrading from a previous version will continue to operate transparently the same as before.  But if you want to apply them to all basic users, you can set the group as a 'default group' to be assigned to all new users.  Based on user requests, Global Permissions/Restrictions already include:

• Prevent File Uploading - will prevent the user from being able to upload a new file.  They will still be able to select existing files from the file manager.
• Prevent User Profile Changes - will prevent the user from being able to change their user profile (email address, profile extensions, etc...)  This does NOT affect the user being able to change their password since we already have a global setting to 'disable user password change requests' in the Site Configuration settings.
• Disable Slingbar (Exponent Menu Bar) or Slingbar menus - will  'hide' the 'Exponent', 'Files', and/or 'Pages' menus from the user (leaving only the 'User' menu).  Or you can select to hide the entire 'Exponent Menu Bar'.  Under normal circumstances, a user with any permission on the site would see the 'slingbar.'  This feature allows greater control on preventing it's display.

Enhanced 'Create' Permission - Unlike the group global permission feature, the enhanced 'create' permission feature may affect some users ability to perform actions after a version upgrade!  Currently (v2.2.2), the 'create' permission also always implies/provides the 'edit' permission.  This means that if you can create new module items, you will also be able to edit all module items (but still requires a 'delete' permission to remove the item).  However under the new (v2.2.3) system, the 'create' permission would be separate from the 'edit' permission.  What's NEW is that the 'create' permission (without an 'edit' permission) would also allow you to edit any module item you had created (no change here), but NOT the other users' module items.  To edit other users' module items, you'd also need to have an 'edit' permission.  The same applies to deleting a module item.  If you have a 'create' permission, you may delete a module item you created, but would need a 'delete' permission to delete other users' module items.  In practice, this new feature will allow a module to have many users who are able to create and manage their own items, but not have any influence on the other module users (unless you also gave them an 'edit', 'delete', or 'manage' permission).

As a permissions primer...permissions cascade down through any child objects such as pages, containers, and the module.  The 'manage' permission implies/provides ALL permissions.  The 'configure' permission is needed to access module configuration settings (change the module's action, view, and other module settings).  The 'create' permission is needed to create new items or modules (and up to v2.2.2 also provides an 'edit' permission).  The 'edit' permission is needed to edit an existing module item.  And the 'delete' permission is needed to delete/remove an item or a module.  Admin users are always granted permission!

While this new approach to the 'create' permission should greatly enhance a multi-user site, it is not a complete solution.  There are some scenarios where a user would be allowed to 'create' a new module item, but NOT edit it (invoices, etc...).  It is recommended the developer create a new module controller method/add_permission for that instance.  Creating a stricter permission system would be very complex and time-consuming to implement.  However, there are plans to implement some 'workflow' features such as 'revisions' (allow rolling back to a previous item version) and 'approvals' (optionally require a user with approval permission to approve new or updated content).  These workflow features would not be as complex as those partially implemented in the 0.9x code, but should become very useful.  The workflow features are targeted for the v2.2.4 release.

If you have any suggestions to the above features especially the Group Global Permissions and Enhance Create Permission, please respond with a comment.

Monty Python fans will quickly recognize the title phrase and remember the scene where he's not quite dead.  So begins this article on how to remove all the old, dead stuff from your Exponent site and custom theme.  Before the end of the year (probably v2.2.3 which tentatively will be a Thanksgiving/Christmas holiday/last release of 2013) we'll have stripped out several deprecated modules and no longer support older themes (deprecated function calls).

Deprecated Function Calls

• The most prevalent deprecated call when hard-coding modules is that a 2.0 controller requires an 'action' parameter where all the old school modules only used a 'view' parameter.  The default action is ALWAYS 'showall' (if none is passed) and the default view is ALWAYS the action name (if none is passed).  Therefore if you simply updated an old function call by changing it to 'expTheme::module()' and did not ensure you passed an 'action' parameter...you may not see the correct view...especially if the view you requested was not a variant of the showall action.  
  • Take for instance, the Search module 'Show' view.  If you updated it to simply pass the 'view' parameter of 'show', it would attempt to display the 'showall_show' view with the showall action.  The easiest fix is to change the 'view' parameter to an 'action' parameter which will automatically use the same named view ('action'=>'show').
• I've previously written about the other hard-coding function calls which must be replaced.  In v2.2.1 you'll now receive a deprecated theme call warning message when logged on as an admin.  The message will contain details about what file and line the deprecated call is on and a suggestion on the fix with a link to a more detailed help page.  (updating to 2.2.0 blog post) (theme update guide)

Deprecated Modules

• The Headline module was marked as deprecated quite a while back and was fully removed in v2.2.0.  It is replaced by the Text module showall 'Headline' view.  This change is automatically accomplished in an upgrade by converting all Headline modules into Text modules with the Headline view.
• The Flowplayer module uses a non-HTML5 compliant player and was replaced by a newer Media Player module.  The new Media Player module also plays simple YouTube links using the same player (YouTube module requires using the 'embed' code) so we've also deprecated the YouTube module.  Though they still exist, they will be completely removed as stated above.  There is currently an optional upgrade script to convert all Flowplayer and YouTube modules into Media Player modules.  Currently if you run a 0.9x Migration, it will create Flowplayer/YouTube modules which you can then upgrade to Media Player modules.  This will be changed once the deprecated modules are removed.
• All the old school modules have been deprecated, replaced, and removed as of v2.2.0.  In fact, you'll notice the 'Old School' modules tab is missing from the Module Manager.  Any old school modules on the site will automatically be upgraded to work with their 2.0 controller replacement during an upgrade.

Updated Requirements?

• And now that PHP v5.5 has been released, PHP v5.3 is no longer recommended (end of life) and PHP 5.2 is obsolete, we should consider updating the minimum PHP requirement be at least v5.3.1 (or one of the more robust iterations of v5.3) to allow some of the v5.3+ only PHP features such as namespaces, etc...

The next release will introduce a new 'Facebook' module and optional Facebook 'Like' and Twitter 'Tweet' buttons to blog posts.  

The new Facebook module will allow you to insert a 'Like' button onto a page which points to the site, the page, or a custom url.  It will also allow you to insert a 'Like Box' (or timeline) onto a page.  These views interact with Facebook to display results from Facebook, and also update 'Likes' on Facebook.  There are several display options which reflect the same options offered by the widget on Facebook.com.

Blog posts may now optionally display Facebook 'Like' and/or Twitter 'Tweet' buttons at the bottom of each post.  These features should allow greater proliferation of your ideas and works.

Additionally, we've added a new optional 'Follow' button to the Twitter module view, and there will be a new (optional) user profile extension which allows creating a 'signature' which is automatically attached to the end of blog posts you create.

In this, Part V of my advanced SEO tips for Exponent CMS websites, I'll discuss a critical component for search engine marketing: Analytics.

A gigantic aspect of search marketing is measuring, analyzing, and modifying your SEO and PPC campaigns to ensure they're always performing at their best. The best way to gather this data is by integrating a comprehensive traffic analytics program into your Exponent CMS website.

One of the most popular Analytics programs available – and is 100 percent free – is Google Analytics. Google Analytics gathers detailed statistics about web traffic and its sources and measures conversions and sales. All of this data is essential for running a well optimized SEO campaign.

So how do you get Google Analytics to work on your Exponent CMS website? If you're the webmaster of an Exponent site, the process takes a few steps but it's really quite simple.

Setting Up Your Google Analytics Account

If you or your client don't already have a Google Analytics account set up, it's very easy to get a new account. Simply go to Google.com/Analytics and sign in with your Google Account. From there, you'll need to go to Accounts list and click to add a “New Account.”

Next, fill out the pertinent information about your Exponent CMS website, giving it an account name and providing your website's URL. Whether or not you choose to allow Google to view your account data is up to you.

When you're done, simply click “Get Tracking ID” and accept the Google Terms & Conditions to get the code snippet you'll need to integrate into your Exponent CMS theme files.

Installing Your Google Analytics Code

As you can see in the image above, you'll need to simply copy the code snippet tracking code found in the box that is specific to your account and paste it into each page of your site.

If you were working with a straight HTML site, this could get a little cumbersome, however because we're working with a dynamic CMS that uses themes/subthemes, you'll only need to paste it into each of your theme files.

You can access these theme files within cPanel or by pulling them down via FTP.

Within your public_html directory, you'll need to navigate into your Exponent theme folder and into the directory of the theme you're using for your website.

Within your theme directory you'll first want to edit your index.php file, inserting your code snippet just before the closing body tag of the file:

Once you've pasted in your snippet, save the file or push it back up via FTP. Go back into your theme folder and into “subthemes” and repeat this paste/save step for each of your website's subtheme files.

Once you've saved the snippet, you can verify its tracking status by going back to your Google Analytics account and into Tracking Info where you copied your code snippet. There you'll see the tracking status for your Analytics account:

Now that you've successfully setup and installed Google Analytics into your Exponent CMS website, you can now set goals, track traffic sources and gather other pertinent website data that will help you continually measure and analyze the performance of your SEO marketing strategy.

About the Author

This SEO tutorial article was written by Chris Everett, a search engine marketing consultant at Captivate Search Marketing in Atlanta, Georgia.

Chris has worked with Exponent CMS websites since 2007 and continues to help improve the system's SEO friendliness.

Connect with Chris on Google+ to learn more.

As a follow up to Part III of my advanced SEO tips for Exponent CMS webmasters that discussed installing webmaster tools,  I'll now discuss the importance of XML Sitemaps and how to create and configure one for your Exponent site.

What are XML Sitemaps?

XML Sitemaps for your website that notifies the search engines about each web pages on your site, how important each page is, as well as how often the site is updated.

Creating a XML Sitemap also provides a way for the search engines to discover pages on your website that they might not have found through the normal site crawling process.

A complement to the Robots.txt file, after they are generated, XML Sitemaps are uploaded to Google and Bing Webmaster tools to help you manage the indexation of your web pages.

Creating & Uploading a XML Sitemap

Generating an XML sitemap is very easy by going to www.xml-sitemaps.com.

This website gives step by step instructions on how to create your XML Sitemap. You'll first need to enter your website URL and then select the frequency that your site is changed.

Next you can tell the search engines precisely when the last time your site was updated:

The Priority tag for your XML sitemap assigns a value to your URLs between 0.0 and 1.0, where 0.0 identifies the lowest priority URLs on your site and 1.0 identifies the highest priority URLs. The default priority of a page is 0.5.

Once you've filled out the necessary data, you can then run your XML Sitemap by clicking the “Start” Button.

As you can see in the image above, you can run a XML Sitemap for a website up to 500 pages for free. If your website has more than 500 pages that need to be indexed, you'll have to find an alternative sitemap generator, or pay for the advanced version.

Once you click “Start” the Sitemap crawler will start to build your XML Sitemap:

Once the Sitemap generator is finished running, you can download it and push it up to the public_html directory of your Exponent CMS website via FTP or cPanel/WHM.

You can verify that you've properly uploaded your XML sitemap by going to www.yourwebsite.com/sitemap.xml It should look something like this:

Configuring Your XML Sitemap in Webmaster Tools

So now that you've created and uploaded your new XML Sitemap to your web server, you now must go to Webmaster tools for both Google and Bing and submit your XML Sitemap URL.

Google Webmaster Tools

In the Google Webmaster Tools, you can access the Sitemap configuration page from the dashboard, or on the left hand menu under Optimization by clicking the “Sitemaps” link.

Once you've landed on the Sitemaps configuration page, you can submit a new sitemap by clicking the red “Add/Test Sitemap” button on the right hand side.

There, you'll simply enter “sitemap.xml” in the rest of the URL field and click “Submit Sitemap”

You'll receive a “Sitemap Submitted” message to let you know that you've successfully completed the process:

Bing Webmaster Tools

Similarly to the Google Webmaster Tools, you can submit a XML Sitemap on the Bing Webmaster Tools dashboard under the “Sitemaps” section:

To submit the sitemap, simply click “Submit a Sitemap” and fill out your XML Sitemap URL:

Once you've filled out your URL, click submit and you're done.

You now have successfully notified the search engines about each page on your website. While it does not guarantee every page will be indexed, it does help eliminate URLs not getting picked up through normal crawling.

In Part V of this Advanced SEO Tips series, I'll discuss how to configure and install Google Analytics on your Exponent CMS website.

About the Author

Chris Everett is an organic SEO expert and is the founder of the Captivate Search Marketing search engine marketing firm in Atlanta, GA.

If you'd like to learn more about how to optimize your Exponent CMS website for maximum SEO value, feel free to contact Chris on Google+ or by visiting his website.

If you're the webmaster of an Exponent CMS website that is undergoing a search engine marketing program, there are several metrics you'll need to analyze to measure the performance of your campaign.

Among those basic trends are web page indexation, as well as website traffic and its sources.

In this, the third part of my Advanced SEO Tips for Exponent CMS Websites series, I'll discuss how to verify and install Google & Bing Webmaster Tools. In later posts, I'll discuss how to create and upload XML sitemaps, as well has how to setup and install Google Analytics.

Webmaster Tools

Webmaster tools allow you to manage the indexation of your website, as well as analyze its visibility in the search index. Before you can do this, though, you must first verify ownership of your site with both Google and Bing search engines.

Install Google Webmaster Tools

After logging into your Google Account, you'll want to go to https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/. To setup your website profile, you'll need to select the red “Add a Site” Button on the right hand side of your screen.

A popup box will then appear, where you'll type in your website's domain name.

You'll next be directed to Verify ownership of your website.

There are multiple ways to verify ownership including inserting a meta tag in the header of your theme file or selecting your DNS provider, but the method I like to use is uploading an html verification file.

Simply download your HTML verification file and then upload that file to your public_html directory through cPanel or FTP.

Once your file is uploaded, go back to Google Webmaster Tools and click the red verify button.

If you've successfully uploaded your verification file, you'll get a Green check mark letting you know you've retained ownership of the site.

Install Bing Webmaster Tools

Similarly to Google, Bing Webmaster Tools can also be verified multiple ways. First you'll go to http://www.bing.com/toolbox/webmaster and either sign in or create a new account.

Once you are logged in you'll see your Bing Webmaster Tools domain dashboard and immediately you'll notice the “Add a Site” box where you can quickly type in your site's domain and then click “Add”

You'll then be directed to a screen where you're given the option to declare whether an XML sitemap has been uploaded to your server:

If you don't have an XML sitemap already on your web server, you can simply click “Add” and move forward through the process. I'll discuss creating and uploading XML sitemaps in Part IV of this advanced SEO tips for Exponent CMS websites.

You can download your “BingSiteAuth.xml” verification file from Bing and then push that file up to public_html through FTP or cPanel/WHM. Once you've uploaded the file, click the “Verify” button to complete the process.

Once you've verified ownership of your website with both Google and Bing Webmaster Tools, you can then remove URLs from the search index, view any crawl errors experienced by search spiders, analyze the overall health of your site, as well as submit XML sitemaps - all of which are essential tasks for properly maintaining a website undergoing an advanced SEO program.

About the Author

This article was written by SEO consultant Chris Everett of Captivate Search Marketing in Atlanta, Georgia.

Chris has worked with the Exponent CMS open source project since 2007.

Feel free to connect with him on Google+ or LinkedIn.

In Part II of my Advanced SEO Tips for Exponent CMS websites, I'll discuss how you can utilize your .htaccess file to practice better SEO.

.HTACCESS

Your .htaccess file, which also ships in your Exponent CMS install, is used to override the Apache or PHP configuration files on your web server.

The .htaccess file can be pulled down from your Exponent site's public_html directory much like the robots.txt, which I discussed in Part I of this advanced series file can through FTP or cPanel/WHM. The one catch here is if you're trying to pull it down from cPanel/WHM, you must check the box that allows you to see hidden files (dotfiles) in your directories.

For SEOs who are optimizing Exponent CMS sites, there are two primary modifications that they can make to the file in order to make their Exponent CMS sites more SEO friendly.

Forcing a Preferred Domain URL

The first .htaccess modification you can make to optimize your website for SEO is to force a www. or a non-www. domain URL structure. This prohibits the possibility of two identical pages being indexed by the search engines with a www. and a non-www. version of the same website (the dreaded duplicate content issue!)

In the latest releases of Exponent CMS that support canonical URLs, this isn't such a big deal (so long as you're defining the canonical URL), but in previous versions of Exponent CMS before 2.2.0, you'll want to make sure you put this modification in place.

All you need to do is pull down your .htaccess file, uncomment out the example rule you want to follow, fill in the proper domain name, save, and re-push your file to the live server:

301 Redirects

During a website redesign project, one of the most important items to cross off the go-live check list (for the SEO minded at least) is to ensure you have any 301 redirects in place for URLs that have been indexed by the search engines.

Often times when a website is moved from one CMS platform to another, or undergoes an SEO overhaul, the URLs of each web page are updated.

When this happens, SEOs want to ensure that every URL that's been indexed by the search engines are permanently (301) redirected to their new URLs so the website does not lose any of their current organic rankings, nor deter potential customers who have found the website via organic search and landed on a “Page Not Found” (404 error) because the URL they landed on wasn't properly redirected.

Plotting out 301 Redirects is relatively simple in the .htaccess file. All you need to do is pull it down from your public_html directory and at the bottom of your .htaccess file start adding your 301 Redirect rules, which would look as such:

These two .htaccess modifications are critical for websites undergoing SEO programs, particularly when that site is going through a redesign.

About the Author

This blog post was written by Chris J. Everett, a small business SEO consultant based in Atlanta, Georgia.

Chris has used Exponent CMS extensively over the past 5 years and writes about topics related to the SEO friendliness of the system.

To learn more about Chris, connect with him on Google+.

When reading blogs that discuss topics related to SEO, most of the time you'll read about on-site strategies such as keyword optimization, image optimization, cross linking, etc.

Most of these  on-site strategies can be easily executed through the administration interface of your Exponent CMS website.

Some of the mission critical items for SEO that you can't execute through the admin interface of your Exponent CMS must be done on the web server through a FTP or cPanel/WHM type interface.

This post is the first in a series of submissions I'll write over the next few days discussing advanced server-side SEO tips for your Exponent CMS website include editing your robots.txt and .htaccess files, as well as pushing webmaster tools verification files and XML sitemaps to your web server.

In this edition, Part I, I'll discuss how modifying the Robots.txt file that resides on your web server can eliminate issues with duplicate content.

Robots.txt

The Robots.txt file on your web server defines crawling parameters for robots that crawl websites all over the Internet. For SEO, the Robots.txt file is a way to allow/disallow search engine robots (such as Googlebot) that index your web pages from crawling specific directories on your website.

If you're working with a new install of Exponent CMS, the Robots.txt file will be included in your installation with a basic set of disallow parameters that will look like this:

Because Exponent CMS is a dynamic platform, there are several modules within the system such as blog/news/portfolio or ecommerce that can pose some SEO headaches revolving around duplicate content.

Some of the most frequent issues that I encounter from Exponent CMS websites in terms of duplicate title tags, content, etc., come from the tagging functionality (blogs in specific) and when login/view cart links are hard coded for users on ecommerce websites.

If a robot can crawl a link to a blog tag or a link to login, this often times causes that URL to be indexed – more often than not with a duplicate Title or Description tag as other dynamic pages on your site. The example below shows an ecommerce Exponent CMS website that has had its login module link indexed. As you can see, the meta description is exactly the same as the homepage meta description:

You can easily prevent this type of SEO issue by disallowing the /loginmodule (or for newer versions of Exponent the /login) or any other troublesome directories within your Robots.txt file.

In the screenshot below, you can see where this Robots.txt file has added more parameters than the initial file that comes with your Exponent CMS install.

Simply pull down this file from public_html through your FTP or cPanel/WHM interface, make these modifications and push that file back up to your web server to ensure you don't experience these easily avoidable SEO headaches.

In Part II of these server-side SEO tips for Exponent CMS sites, I'll discuss how to modify the .htaccess in order to redirect URLs and set a preferred domain URL structure.

About the Author

Chris J. Everett is an SEO expert and the founder of Captivate Search Marketing, a digital marketing firm based in Atlanta, Georgia.

Chris has worked with Exponent CMS in a variety of roles since 2007 and continues to work with the software's developers to further enhance its SEO friendliness.

Connect with Chris on Google+

One feature which didn't make the move from Exponent 1.x to 2.x was the 'Wizard'...essentially a sequential set of forms.  Well 'ta-daaa', we're planning to have a wizard or paged-form feature in the next release (already in the 'develop' code branch)!  This will be a much simpler implementation than available in 1.x, as a 2.x paged form can easily be designed all in one place, instead of having to create separate form pages, etc...  This feature will be available in both the forms module/site forms (event registration now uses site forms) and in templates/views.

You may be asking, 'how does a paged form or wizard work?'  Well in many of the system forms, we use 'tabs' to segregate collections of input, and recently also introduced 'groups' to further segregate sets of controls on a page/tab.  These will still be used in most cases, but in some scenarios a sequential or progressive set of controls is more intuitive.  This is more evident in a complex form requiring a great deal of customer input such as a 'camp registration and release' form.  On the other hand, the 'site configuration' form is NOT intended to be sequential and would be practically unusable if it did not remain as a tabbed form.

How will a paged form work in Exponent?  In the form designer, it will be as simple as adding a 'form page break' control as the first/top control, and placing one where ever you want to begin a new 'form page'.  Exponent will do all the heaving lifting from that point.  If you want to revert to a standard form, you'd simply remove/delete the page break controls from that form using the form designer.  In practice a paged form would have at least two page breaks (including the top one) with one or more being the break(s) between the different pages.

The result will then look something like this.  Exponent performs input validation on all visible controls prior to moving to the next 'page.'  And as the development code matures prior to the next release, we will likely add form module configuration settings to enable/disable certain features like the 'page' description (Basic Information, etc...) appearing below the 'page' caption (Step 1, Step 2, etc...) AND also at the top of the current 'page', etc...

How will a paged form work within a template/view?  In the simplest sense a 'paged' form is simply one with controls grouped inside 'fieldsets' and then a jQuery plugin is used.  The {form} block function has been updated to accept a new 'paged' parameter which now also requires you pass an 'id' or 'name'.  Then within the form you group pages of control with the 'page' block with a required 'label' and an optional 'description' param.  Let's take a module view (mass-mailer) that is currently coded like this:

    {form action=mass_mail_out}
        {group label="Send this Message To"|gettext}
            {control type="checkbox" class="emailall" postfalse=1 name="allusers" label="All Site Users?"|gettext value=1 description='Uncheck to allow user/group/freeform selection'|gettext}
            {control type="checkbox" postfalse=1 name="batchsend" label="Batch Send?"|gettext value=1 checked=1 description='Hide email addresses from other users'|gettext}
            {userlistcontrol class="email" name="user_list" label="Users"}
            {grouplistcontrol class="email" name="group_list" label="Groups"}
            {control type="listbuilder" class="email" name="address_list" label="Other Addresses" size=5}
        {/group}
        {group label="Message"|gettext}
            {control type="text" name="subject" label="Subject"|gettext}
            {control type="html" name="body" label="Message"|gettext}
            {control type="uploader" name="attach" label="Attachment"|gettext description='Optionally send a file attachment'|gettext}
        {/group}
        {control type="buttongroup" submit="Send"|gettext cancel="Cancel"|gettext}
    {/form}

a 'paged' version (if we wanted one) is easily created and would be coded like this:

    {form action=mass_mail_out name='mass-mail' paged=1}
        {page label="Send this Message To"|gettext description="Select Recipients"}
            {control type="checkbox" class="emailall" postfalse=1 name="allusers" label="All Site Users?"|gettext value=1 description='Uncheck to allow user/group/freeform selection'|gettext}
            {control type="checkbox" postfalse=1 name="batchsend" label="Batch Send?"|gettext value=1 checked=1 description='Hide email addresses from other users'|gettext}
            {userlistcontrol class="email" name="user_list" label="Users"}
            {grouplistcontrol class="email" name="group_list" label="Groups"}
            {control type="listbuilder" class="email" name="address_list" label="Other Addresses" size=5}
        {/page}
        {page label="Message"|gettext description="Email Content"}
            {control type="text" name="subject" label="Subject"|gettext}
            {control type="html" name="body" label="Message"|gettext}
            {control type="uploader" name="attach" label="Attachment"|gettext description='Optionally send a file attachment'|gettext}
        {/page}
        {control type="buttongroup" submit="Send"|gettext cancel="Cancel"|gettext class='finish'}
    {/form}

As with all pre-release code, the specifics listed above are subject to change prior to the actual release.

We've also already added another 1.x feature missing in 2.x...'Configuration Profiles' which allows backing up and restoring the current site configuration (on the server).  This becomes really handy in a test or development environment as you can very quickly switch between databases and themes to test a new feature or customization.

As I've optimized Exponent CMS websites over the years, one of the challenges that I've discovered is making sure the developers understand the proper SEO friendly markup principles required to maximize the organic search value of the site.

It's not that I blame the developers for some of the markup oversights I've come across when analyzing the level of SEO friendliness an Exponent CMS site might have – after all, it's their job to build the sites and the SEO consultant's job to optimize them.

With this in mind, I've come up with these SEO friendly markup tips to educate Exponent CMS developers who might not be as SEO savvy in order to make the development process more efficient – particularly for websites undergoing an organic search optimization program.

Don't apply the H1 Tag to the Website Logo

I've seen this done many, many times, where developers have created a logo style class in the CSS and have applied an H1 tag to the logo in every subtheme of the site.

The problem with this from an SEO perspective is multifaceted. First, because the logo is typically at the top of the page markup, this H1 tag is the first tag that the search engine spider sees as it's crawling your page top to bottom.

In terms of content structure, the H1 tag is your web page's most important header tag, followed by the subheader tags H2 and H3, because it tells the search spider what the main topic (or keywords) is for the page. You also only want to use one H1 tag per web page. So if you're using the H1 tag in this fashion, you're literally telling the spider that whatever your logo title text is, is the main content topic for each page.

It also means that if you're building your Exponent CMS site with SEO in mind, you most likely have multiple H1 tags on each of your web pages, which isn't ideal for proper on-site optimization.

Don't Rely on Exponent's Out-of-the-Box Module Title Markup

There are a lot of built in features that Exponent CMS has that are meant to be convenient time savers when it comes to markup.

One of those being the across-the-board H1 tag that is applied to each module title field.

The problem with this dovetails on the H1 logo markup that I discussed above, where if you're utilizing multiple types of content modules on one page, it becomes very easy to have multiple H1 tags on that single web page, which again, isn't best practice for on-site optimization.

If your homepage has a normal text module with a strong H1 tag, but you also have an upcoming events section, as well as a latest news section using a news module in summary/headlines view, topped off with a footer utilizing 3 or 4 separate link manager modules, you have potential for 7 or 8 different H1 tags on that one web page if you simply used Exponent's stock module markup.

Proper Markup Makes All the Difference

I'll illustrate for you an example of how using these two SEO friendly markup tips above can make a tremendous difference.

Earlier this year I had experienced some issues with a client's Exponent CMS website that was undergoing an SEO marketing program. The problem with the site was that we couldn't seem to get passed page 3 of the organic search results, and Google couldn't really decide which of our web pages it wanted to rank for some of our targeted keywords. Every couple of days, the page on our site that would show up in the middle of page 3 would change from the homepage to an internal page.

When I started digging into the code, I realized we not only had the H1 tag applied to our logo, but we also utilized all the stock module title H1 tags, so we had 9, yes 9 H1 tags on our homepage alone.

After finding this markup issue, we quickly stripped the H1 tag off of our logo, assigned H2 or H3 tags to our module titles that weren't the most important header tag our each of our web pages, and within about 10 days of me re-submitting our site through webmaster tools, we finally climbed onto page 1 of the search results, and to this day, every web page on this clients' site sits in the top 3 of the organic results.

If you're an Exponent CMS developer who has been utilizing these H1 tags in your markup, you might want to consider these SEO friendly tips to not only improve the organic value of your websites, but also to make your lives easier so you don't have to go back and fix it at a later date.

About the Author

Chris Everett is an SEO specialist in Atlanta, GA, and the founder of the Captivate Search Marketing Atlanta SEO Company.

To learn more about the technical SEO aspects of Exponent CMS, connect with Chris on Google+.

I've worked with Exponent CMS in a variety of roles since 2007, from being merely a user/customer of OIC Group, Inc., to becoming a project manager for OIC Group, and now as a SEO consultant for my own business in Atlanta.

While Exponent CMS doesn't have the community following of Wordpress, Joomla, Drupal, etc., I've had experience with all of these top CMS platforms, but Exponent is always the one I come back to.

In terms of SEO friendliness, Wordpress has several plugins that work quite well for optimizing websites, but what I love about Exponent CMS is that the markup is highly flexible and all of the SEO tools needed for to optimize your website are built in – no plugins necessary.

Over the last several weeks, I've been working with the lead developers on the Exponent CMS project – Phillip Ball and David Leffler – on enhancements to the CMS that make Exponent even more SEO friendly than it already was. In the coming weeks, we'll be adding even more features that I personally believe will make Exponent the most search engine friendly CMS platform in the open source marketplace.

So, aside from being able to control basic Meta Data on a page by page basis, what are some of the other built-in SEO friendly features of Exponent CMS?

Router Maps

When you're working with a CMS that allows for dynamic content publication and display, you're going to run into problems with long, nasty URL strings that include parameters for views, actions and sources that aren't friendly for either users or search engines.

Such is the case with most of the dynamic content modules within Exponent CMS such as news, portfolio, blog, ecommerce, etc. Luckily for SEO enthusiasts such as myself, Exponent has built in an awesome feature called Router Maps that allows you to clean up that nasty URL strings with a cleaner, more search engine friendly version of the URL.

For example, the dynamic blog module URL below is performing the “Show All By Tag” action, where a user can view every blog post that is labeled with that specific tag. The Exponent CMS site will dynamically pull up and display each of these posts, which is essential functionality for a blog, but as you can see the URL isn't exactly user friendly:

By configuring the Router Map function in your Exponent theme folder with the appropriate rule, you can change that nasty URL to a cleaner one such as this:

Flexible URL Structures

Since SEF (Search Engine Friendly) URLs were integrated into Exponent in 2007, they've evolved to become more and more flexible for SEOs.

The benefit of SEF URLs, aside from being easy for users to read, is that SEOs can craft custom optimized URLs with keyword inclusion to make their clients' websites more friendly for organic search.

Exponent allows administrators to assign a variety of URL extensions to their SEF URL field such as .html, .php, .htm, etc., based on their preference.

Historically, all pages within Exponent CMS would display URLs at the root level.

Recently though in Exponent's 2.2.0 stable release, the SEF URL field has become even more flexible. The system now allows for nested URL structures that are preferred by some SEO consultants that allow URLs to look like this:

The flexibility of how SEOs can execute their URLs within our system makes Exponent a very powerful platform for websites focused on SEO and search engine placement.

Rel=Canonical URLs

Another new feature added in the 2.2.0 stable release is support for Rel=Canonical URLs on a page by page basis.

For SEOs dealing with large websites that have potential duplicate content issues (having the same exact content appearing in multiple places on your website, or if your site is receiving syndicated content), the Rel=Canonical tag configuration allows SEOs the ability to easily assign credit to a preferred source URL in the event that duplicate content needs to be avoided.

Rel=Canonical tag fields have been integrated throughout the system in the page manager configurations, and in specific dynamic module types such as Exponent's news, portfolio, blog, and ecommerce modules.

File Manager Image Meta Data

The final feature that makes Exponent CMS a SEO friendly CMS that I'll discuss in this post is related to Exponent's file manager and attachable files functionality.

Certain modules within the system utilize “attachable files” functionality to display images in certain views/layouts.

For example, Exponent's ecommerce, blog, portfolio, and news modules use attachable image files to display images related to that product/portfolio piece/post:

The SEO friendly feature related to this functionality is how the image is optimized for organic search engine value.

Rather than simply inserting image files into the WYSIWYG editor for display on the website as you would using a text module, you can assign your Image Alt Text and Image Title tags for attachable files within Exponent CMS' file manager.

So as you've optimized your attachable file, your image Alt text and Title tags will show up in the HTML markup just as if you had inserted your image into a WYSIWYG editor and optimized the image that way:

Future Exponent CMS SEO Friendly Feature Enhancements

As the CMS continues to evolve, I've made it my personal mission to ensure that we work in every SEO friendly feature possible into Exponent CMS.

In future releases, we'll be working on such enhancements as allowing administrators to configure “No Index, No Follow” type robots tags on a page and post level.

We also plan to enhance the Exponent CMS tagging system so administrators will be able to assign unique SEO friendly meta data on a tag by tag basis, as well as add link title attributes to the Exponent CMS link manager module configuration.

If one thing is for certain as we continue to make Exponent CMS more and more Search Engine Friendly, it's that our system is incredibly powerful and its future is very bright.

About the author

Chris Everett is a contributor to the Exponent CMS project.

Chris is a search engine marketing consultant based in Atlanta, Georgia, and he's the founder of the Captivate Search Marketing SEO Company.

To learn more about the SEO friendly features of Exponent CMS, feel free to connect with Chris on Google+.

(Update: we HAVE reverted to the name 'container' instead of 'container2' for release candidate1!)  Here are some tips and tutorials to help ensure your site is 'v2.2 ready'!  While there is really no show-stopping change moving from v2.1.1 to v2.2.0, the move to v2.2.0 will reveal any themes or custom views which haven't been updated to 2.0 standards.  In a pragmatic sense, though the upgrade must be run and completed to convert the database for use in v2.2.0, your site would continue to work using one of the shipped or add-on themes which are 2.2 ready.

Since this upgrade only affects a custom theme and/or custom views, that's where we'll need to look:

• Theme 1.0 compatibility removed
  • This one is the easiest to spot and correct.  It will occur in the main theme template (/themes/mytheme/index.php) and the subthemes (found in the subthemes folder)
  • Calls to the deprecated 1.0 theme subsystem look like 'exponent_theme_method' instead of 'expTheme::method'  And moreso there are only three mandatory calls with a fourth recommended call for hard-coding other modules
    • expTheme::head(...) in the <head>...</head> section, this method is used in place of the deprecated exponent_theme_headerInfo(...) call
    • expTheme::main() in the main content area in the <body>...</body> section, this method is used in place of the deprecated exponent_theme_main() call.
    • expTheme:foot() at the bottom of the <body>...</body> section, this method is used in place of the deprecated exponent_theme_footerInfo() call.
    • expTheme::module(...) within the main content area for hard-coding (embedding) modules, this is THE single multi-purpose method to display a module in place of many deprecated calls: 
      exponent_theme_showSectionalModule(...), 
      expTheme::showSectionalModule(...), 
      exponent_theme_showTopSectionalModule(...), 
      expTheme::showTopSectionalModule(...), 
      exponent_theme_showModule(...),
      expTheme::showModule(...),
      expTheme::showSectionalController(...),
      and expTheme::showController(...)
      • A big difference between the expTheme::module(...) call and the others (except the last two) is that it is called with a single parameter of an associative array of named parameters, whereas the deprecated ones were called with simple (sequential) parameters.
      • Likewise most of these various calls were to either deal with a 1.0 module or 2.0 controller, or to hard-code a module with a specific 'scope' (global, sectional, or top-sectional), which is now simply a 'scope' named parameter with 'global' being the default.  The expTheme::module(...) call is 'smart' in being able to to it all!
      • Deprecated call - expTheme::showModule($module,$view,$title,$source,$pickable,$section,$hide_menu,$params);
      • 2.0 call - expTheme::module(array("controller"=>"navigation","action"=>"showall","view"=>"showall_mega","source"=>"mega","chrome"=>true));
• Old School (1.0) modules no longer exist
  • Another fairly easy thing to spot and correct are hard-coding an old school module within the main or subtheme template.  In many cases, these old school modules have been disappearing and references to them as hard-coded modules may have already been exposed.  However some were replaced with like named 2.0 modules (controllers)
  • A big difference between the old and 2.0 modules is old school modules only required a 'view' parameter, whereas the 2.0 modules require an 'action' parameter (with the default view implied).  The old school default (view) was 'Default' whereas the 2.0 module default action is 'showall' and the default view is also 'showall'. Therefore to locate old school modules, they were typically called using a 'module' parameter instead of 'controller' (however each are interchangeable).  Specifically, 2.0 modules need to have an action parameter, whereas the old school modules only pass a 'view' parameter (with NO action parameter).  If the old school view was something other than 'Default', please see the next area of discussion.
  • Here's a list of old school modules and their 2.0 counterparts:
    • simplepollmodule or simplepoll => simplePoll
    • navigationmodule or navigation => navigation
    • calendarmodule or calendar => events
    • formmodule or form => forms
    • containermodule or container => container (this has changed to simply 'container' in release candidate 1)
    • headlineController or headline => text (this is a 2.0 controller which has been deprecated)
  • Here's an example of an update required since most themes include a hard-coded container
    • Deprecated call - expTheme::module(array("module"=>"container","view"=>"Default","source"=>"@left"));
    • 2.0 call - expTheme::module(array("controller"=>"container","action"=>"showall","view"=>"showall","source"=>"@left"));
  • ​​If you've kept up to date through v2.1.1, the only NEW upgrade involves the 'container' module.  
  • The deprecated call may continue to work, but is unsupported.  If it fails to work because this is a module name change, your custom themes will not seem to work (will say that containermodule is unavailable) until it is corrected.
• Old School Module Custom Views must be updated to work with their 2.0 module counterpart
  • The most complex of the changes will likely be required for any old school module custom views.  These would be found in the //themes/mytheme/modules/ folder using any of the above full module named folders.  In many cases, the custom view could be upgraded by a couple of simple renames.
    • Rename the 'module' folder into its 2.0 counterpart...e.g., 'navigationmodule' into 'navigation'
    • Within the newly renamed folder, enter the 'views' folder and create a new folder with the name of the module, such as 'navigation'
    • Move all the other files (.tpl files) within that 'views' folder into that newly created folder
    • Enter the folder with the moved templates, then rename the view template(s) into a 2.0 suitable name which includes the action:
      • 'Default.tpl' would become 'showall.tpl'
      • 'YUI Top Nav.tpl' would become 'showall_YUI Top Nav.tpl'
  • Any configuration or form files (.config or .form) would need more complex editing.
    • .config files are no longer used as these details must now be handled within the controller itself
    • .form files are now templates within the 'configure' subfolder of the views folder.  They are named by the associated view name with a .config suffix.  The files are now formatted just like a view instead of using the shorthand notation to create controls.  You should look at a system module like 'events' or 'blog' to get an idea of how view specific configurations work.
• (Updated) Some YUI constants and file names/locations have been deprecated
  • Both of these issues tend to be revealed as improper formatting such as misaligned columns or font styles.
  • The 'Reset' stylesheet names have been deprecated for quite some time (apparently) and were finally removed in YUI v3.10.0.  Since many of the older themes use YUI reset(s) instead of the new 'normalize' standard, here's the changes you'll need to look for and make in the expTheme::head() call at the top of your theme templates (and subthemes) (note the additional 'css' at the beginning of the filename!)
    • cssreset/reset-min.css has become cssreset/cssreset-min.css
    • cssreset/fonts-min.css has become cssfonts/cssfonts-min.css
    • cssreset/grids-min.css has become cssgrids/cssgrids-min.css
  • We have finally removed the deprecated YUI path constants for consistency with other path constants.  These were typically used to load scripts or stylesheets in the theme templates (also subthemes) and custom views)
    • JS_FULL is now JS_URL
    • JS_PATH is now JS_RELATIVE
    • ​YUI3_PATH is now YUI3_RELATIVE
    • YUI2_PATH is now YUI2_RELATIVE

Other articles of interest:

• Coping with the v2.0.9 Upgrade
• How to convert a generic theme to Exponent
• Upgrading templates from Smarty v2 to v3
• 2.0.1 being prepped for release
• Prepping for the 2.0.2 release, more big changes
• Just around the corner

Over the years, Exponent CMS has proven itself to be one of the top search engine friendly CMS platforms available in the marketplace – and it just got better.

I recently teamed up with Exponent CMS code ninja Phillip Ball to integrate a new Canonical URL field into the core of the CMS, allowing webmasters to easily add a <link rel="canonical" > tag into the header of their Exponent CMS web pages, on a page by page basis.

The new Canonical URL field, which will be featured this Friday May 3, 2013 in the 2.2.0 release candidate, has been integrated into the Exponent CMS page manager configuration, and you can also assign a Canonical URL when creating a new news article or blog post.

If you're a developer using Exponent CMS and aren't familiar with the SEO ramifications of the Canonical URL field, you might be asking yourself why this new field matters and what its purpose is.

What's the Purpose of Canonical URLs?

In layman terms, what the Canonical URL Tag does is it tells the search engines what URL to give credit to in the case of multiple URLs having identical content.

For example, if you're trying to make finding information easy for your website users by adding the same content in multiple sections of your site, such as pricing information, photo galleries, etc. by using the Exponent CMS content aggregation feature on your website, you've created yourself a duplicate content issue with the search engines.

In this case, it's important to assign a <link rel=”canonical”> tag on the pages to let the search engine know which URL is the original (and often times only URL indexed) source of the content.

SEOMoz.org also suggests that the rel=canonical tag be utilized on each page of your website, even if you don't have a duplicate page, in case of future developments on your site that might cause a duplicate content issue.

How Do I Use the New Feature?

As Phillip and I have collaborated on this feature, we tried to make it as easy and straight forward as possible from an administrative perspective. If your website will be using Exponent CMS version 2.2.0 or newer, you'll find the Canonical URL field on any content page configuration under the “SEO” tab.

You'll also be able to find this Canonical URL field on the Exponent CMS blog, news, and ecommerce modules when adding or editing a post or product.

If you do not manually assign a Canonical URL within this field, the <link rel=”canonical”> tag will default to the SEF URL for that particular page/post/product.

In order to manually set a Canonical URL for a piece of content, simply type or paste in the FULL URL that you want to assign the canonical tag to.

What Does the Canonical URL Markup Look Like?

The canonical URL tag, whether you assign it manually or let it default automatically, will show up in the header tag of your Exponent CMS website, directly under the meta description tag:

What if My Version of Exponent Doesn't Have the New Canonical URL Field?

If your website's version of Exponent CMS isn't the latest and greatest and you don't want to spend the time upgrading your theme in order to implement this new feature, Phillip Ball has come up with a work around that you can drop right into the header your site's theme.

However, because you should be assigning Canonical URLs on a page by page basis to eradicate duplicate content issues, this work around is not an ideal solution if duplicate content is what you're trying to fix. If you simply want to assign a Canonical URL tag to your web pages because it's a “SEO best practice” for pages not at risk of duplicate content, here's what you need to do.

Navigate into the backed files of your website, accessing the theme folder and adding this code snippet inside the header tag of your default theme and any subthemes you might have for your site:

 <link rel="canonical" href="<?php echo "http://$_SERVER[HTTP_HOST]$_SERVER[REQUEST_URI]" ?>"/>

Here's what that looks like in the theme file:

While not ideal, this relatively easy process will automatically add a rel=canonical tag on each of your web pages.

About the author

Chris Everett is a SEO consultant and founder of Captivate Search Marketing in Atlanta, GA.

Chris has been a core contributor to the Exponent CMS open source project since 2008.

If you have any questions about rel=canonical tags or how to make your Exponent CMS site more SEO friendly, feel free to drop him a line on Google+.

Since v2.2.0 is classified a 'major update' to Exponent, you may be hesitant to consider upgrading your sites.  Although in reality it is simply the next incremental version update, it does mark a milestone in the maturity of the Exponent 2.0 code.  Here are some immediate and long term benefits to updating to version 2.2.0 once the stable version is released in the near future:

1. As always, a new version means many issues (bugs) have been fixed, and many new features will have been added.
   • For example, as web browser versions are updated more often than ever, an Exponent web site will now offer features to take advantage of new browsers and devices (e.g., html5 forms)
   • There is also a new html5 media player which will work on non-Flash enabled devices, unlike the Flowplayer module.
   • We've also put a lot of work into getting the e-Commerce module(s) working out-of-the-box, including a new sample store database which can be included during installation.  We've especially polished the event registration and donations modules.
   • There are also some new views for the blog module which now offers optional category support.  Additionally, there is a new sample blog database available during installation which automatically creates a new wp-like site.
2. Once you've gotten your custom theme over the 'v2.2.0 hump,' there shouldn't be any custom theme changes required for future updates since we'll have finally eliminated all of the old 1.0 code.
   • Since the initial release of v2.0.0, a couple version updates have required custom themes be updated to continue working.  This was primarily due to the deprecation and replacement of old 1.0 code or modules needed for that original release.  Therefore, since all the old 1.0 code has been removed in the v2.2.0 release, we don't anticipate any major format changes which would require a custom theme update to work with future releases.

We anticipate releasing a stable v2.2.0 by the end of May 2013.

Web presence optimization is a more holistic strategy of online brand building. Although SEO is central to building a strong web presence in search, social media and content marketing are two additional elements that play big roles growing your brand's web presence.

Exponent CMS is well-suited for web presence optimization in that it caters to certain needs to execute a cohesive strategy. Below are three ways in which you can leverage Exponent for web presence optimization.

1. Integrate Social Media Icons

Without question, social media can have a momentous impact on your brand's web presence optimization strategy. "Social signals," (such as Tweets, Facebook Likes, Shares, Pins, and Google +1's) are becoming strong ranking factors for search. For this reason, it's a smart to include social media icons on the pages of your site with social and SEO value (e.g. blog posts.)

The social media marketing component of your brand's web presence optimization strategy will coincide with content marketing (mentioned below) and search engine optimization. This is because most of the content that you create will be shared and promoted via social media. As a result, you can better engage with your target audience and inbound direct traffic to your Exponent site.

2. Create a Blog for Content Marketing

Content marketing is a powerful portal to expand your web presence and make your voice known. Blogging is one of the easiest ways to start content marketing. By created awesome content and sharing it with your social media followers, you can direct quality traffic (and in-market leads) to your website.

Exponent makes it easy to build a blog on your website. Here you can take web presence optimization to the next level by publishing articles, videos, and other forms of engaging content. You can the leverage this content for both SEO and social media marketing.

3. Keyword Optimize Your Pages for SEO

The last web presence optimization tip focuses on SEO - which offers amazing potential to expand your web presence and increase web traffic. The nice thing about Exponent is that it's well-suited to easily keyword optimize the pages of your website. 

The fields that you'll want to ensure are keyword optimized for SEO are the:

• SEF Name (or URL of the page)
• Page Title (also known as the "Meta Title")
• Keywords
• Page Description (also known as the "Meta Description")

All of these fields can be found by click the "Pages" button on the blue column bar (when logged in to Exponent,) and then selecting "Edit This Page."

This keyword optimization is essential for SEO and establishing relevancy on your pages. As a result, you can maximize your SEO and web presence optimization potential.

By now, you should be well aware that Exponent is one of the most SEO friendly CMS platforms available for free on the web. Professional web designers love Exponent because it automatically makes a number of web design elements and tasks SEO friendly. This can offer a number of efficiencies for SEO-conscious web designers and developers. 

If a SEO-friendly web design is priority for your website, then consider the follow three ways in which the Exponent CMS makes certain web design elements SEO friendly.

1. SEO Friendly Web Content

Certain tags that define web content are more SEO friendly than others. For example, the strong tag is considered more SEO friendly then the bold tag, although it performs the same function. This helps search engine spiders crawl and index a page for greater keyword relevancy and on-site SEO authority.

Exponent has been developed with SEO as a top priority. As a result, tags that define content are all defaulted to represent SEO best practices. This makes it easy for add optimized content to a page without having to open-up the website's backend.

2. Social Media Integration Made Ease

A truly SEO friendly web design will have social touch points integrated and easily visible. This touch points may be as simple as social sharing widgets for blog posts, or site-wide social icons to promote for Facebook or Google Plus followers.

With Exponent, you can easily integrate social meda on your web design. In addition to help growing your social media following, this can encourage "likes, tweets, +1's, etc" (or social signals) that can influence your pages' rankings.

3. SEO Friendly Media Elements

Aside from text, media elements like images and videos can either help or hinder SEO performance. Skilled web designers can optimize robust media files so they do not stand in the way of SEO. However with Exponent, this process is made more efficient.

Media files can be easily adjusted and keyword optimized directly via the CMS editor interface. Users can adjust the sizing, image Alt tag, linking, and other attributes on the fly.

Interested in learn more about SEO friendly web design? Check out the SEO Friendly Web Design blog for related tips and insights. Or scope YisooTraining.com for Internet marketing courses and online training courses.

Recently I had written an article on using graphics and files which was common to most modules using either the WYSIWYG editor or as 'attached' files.  In this article I want to explore how to take advantage of the unique features of each module based on their designed purpose.  Again, you can use the text module to mimic the output from most of the other modules, but why not 'use the right tool for the job'

We'll start with the 'News' module.  The strengths of the news module are: each news item has a publish and an optional unpublish date, meaning the first date to display and the last date to display.  Also the items can be sorted several different ways by date in addition to manually (by rank).  You may also set the priority of the item by 'featuring it'.  A featured item will displayed in all views, where if not featured it may be hidden on some displays if the 'show featured' setting is on.  You may also publish the news items as an rss news feed or pull another rss news feed into the news module to be displayed as news items.  News modules may also have user subscriptions using the optional E-Alert feature.  Additionally, the a news item may be tagged so it can be associated with other similar news and non-news items based on the keyword tag(s).  Therefore the 'News' module is best suited for news or announcement type information.

In some ways, the 'Blog' module is like the news module on steroids.  It allows user comments on blog items and optionally allows groupings by category.  It has a 'draft' feature where the article will only be visible to the editor or administrator until published.  Unlike a news item, a blog item/article does not have an unpublish date, is only sorted by publish date, and doesn't pull in external rss feeds.  As it title suggests, the 'Blog' module is best suited for managing articles or web logs (blogs).

The 'File Downloads' module is very versatile, especially when contrasted with the blog module.  It deals with 'attached' file directly instead of the system generic method.  In addition to the attached file, you can attach a 'preview' image to be displayed on the site, or point the download to an external link.  It can optionally publish it's items as a Podcast.  It can optionally display attached media files using a media viewer to play the audio/video within the item.  It does not proved the user subscription feature.  If you need to provide file downloads or a Podcast, the 'File Downloads' module is your best bet.

The 'Portfolio' module deals with lists of data.  It does not store publish dates but can be ordered either manually or alphabetically.  It also provides a 'feature this' option.  It does not allow comments nor provide an rss feed option.  The 'Portfolio' module is best suited for directories or other lists of information.

The 'Photo Album' module deals with photos or images.  Its views focus on the attached image rather than the title and description, such as the gallery or slideshow views.  In addition to being sorted manually, photo items may be displayed randomly.  It also deals directly with an image file, meaning one photo item per image.  It should go without saying, but the 'Photo Album' module is bested suited for photos and images.

The 'Flowplayer', 'YouTube', and 'Media Player' (new to v2.2) deals with audio and video files.  While the 'file download' module can provide some features, the focus on these modules is displaying the media by playing it on the web site.  It provides greater control over the actual display of the media player being used.  These modules are best suited for display media on your site.  The 'Media Player' replaces both the 'Flowplayer' and 'YouTube' modules primarily because it can handle both types of media and is HTML5 compliant (Flash is not required)

Hopefully this article has provided some insight on choosing the best module for the task at hand.  I'll plan to write a follow up article on some of the more unique modules.

Exponent is a very active project and frequently receives new features.  Issues or anomalies are also corrected shortly after being identified.  You'd think those would be great incentives to update to the most recent stable version, just to make managing and maintaining a web site much easier.  Here are some tips to help in upgrading a site, or to prepare to upgrade a site.

As a quick overview, an Exponent web site consists of five (5) components:

1. the Exponent software, which gives you an empty site and is the starting place for all sites whether being built from scratch, moved to a new server, or restored after a server failure. This is the part of the update that we provide for you.
2. the custom theme, which gives your site a unique character apart from all other web sites.  While we provide some sample themes (either in the package or additional ones on the download site), most users want to customize their own theme.  The user must maintain (update?) the custom theme and ensure it does not contain obsolete commands or calls.  It is stored/contained in the '/themes' folder.
3. the site's configuration settings, which hold the basic information about the site.  It is stored in the 'config.php' file which is created and updated by the Exponent software.  It is unique to each web server.
4. the site's content, which is the majority all you see on the web site.  This is stored in the database and is updated automatically during the 'upgrade' process.
5. the site's support files, which includes all the images used on the site, and any files made available though the site.  These are stored in the '/files' folder and are not affected by upgrades.

The first step in preparing to upgrade a site (and preventing disaster in general), is always maintain a BACK UP of your site.  In order to back up the five (5) components:

1. The Exponent software is always available on Sourceforge and through GitHub, so there's no need to keep a local copy.
2. The custom theme was created by you and in most cases you'll already maintain a copy.  However in v2.2.0+, there is a new 'Export Theme' command available in the Theme Manager to easily package and download your custom theme for restoration, or to move to a new site.  The theme may be restored/added to a site using the 'Install Extension' command.
3. The 'config.php' file is located in the '/conf' folder (v2.0/2.1) or the '/framework/conf' folder (v2.2).  The easiest way to quickly get 'back up and running' is to restore a copy of the config.php file.  For security reasons Exponent provides no automated method to retrieve nor restore the config.php file.  However, we highly recommend you use cPanel or ftp to obtain a copy.
4. The site's content (database) is easily saved or restored using the Import/Export EQL (Exponent Query Language) File commands. The export command allows you to tailor which information/tables are saved, while the import command replaces any database tables with the ones stored in the EQL file.
5. Lastly, the site's support files are easily saved using the Import/Export Files commands.

So once you have a backup of your site, especially the site's content (EQL file), you may proceed.

In a very simplistic sense, upgrading to a new version of Exponent is an easy two (2) step process.

1. Install the new software version on your server by either extracting the .zip file to the root folder/subfolder, or using 'git pull' from ssh or a shell.
2. Browse to your site and follow the instructions in the 'upgrade' notice which now appears.

That sounds so simple, what could go wrong?  Well, here are some common issues or problems which might prevent a smooth upgrade:

• Your custom theme (or a custom view) is outdated and uses obsolete commands.  Though the basic format of an Exponent theme hasn't changed much from the v0.9x days, many of the 'commands' have been updated and streamlined.  Here's the documentation on the theme template format to check/update your theme.  Here's a good article on checking for and updating themes to be v2.2.0+ compliant.  As we move into version 2.2.0+, many of the obsolete calls will no longer work.  The easiest way to confirm the problem lies in the custom theme is to switch your site to a 'shipped' theme and see if it works as expected.  If for some reason you can't log onto the site, the current theme is stored in the 'config.php' file on the line with DISPLAY_THEME_REAL.
• Your site crashed in the middle of an upgrade and now is 'broken'.  While this rarely occurs with the 'stable' software, it can exist after a test with pre-release software.  Your best bet is to run the upgrade again by manually kicking it off with a browse to your site via www.yoursite.org/install/index.php.  In many cases this will detect and correct a half-upgraded site which may also correct the issue.

While we realize that many Exponent users are actually providing a paid service to clients and their 'time is money.'  Therefore, if a site is up and running, why 'donate' your valuable time to a paying customer.  However, if YOU are the one doing most of the site content, it sure helps to have access to the 'user suggested' new features and have those annoying quirks and bugs fixed.

Though Exponent is designed to be 'easy to use' and 'flexible', sometimes the overlap of features between modules can make it  seem a bit complex.  Most modules allow you to display text and graphics, however each module is different in how content is displayed (how it appears to the user and acts as a web page) or administered.(managing and updating the content such as editing).  In this article I'll attempt to show the various features and limitations available to help you determine which is right for your particlular application.

The easiest method to display content on a page is to use a 'text' module. In fact you can mimic the content of most of other modules using a single text module if you're willing to do a lot of work to manually manage it.  In it's default state a text module item simply has a title and WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) content.  However, you can optionally add file attachments using the module configuration settings 'Files' tab.  First let's look at how we can use graphics and files in the WYSIWYG content.

The WYSIWYG editor allows you to insert insert graphics and links in the content.  To insert a graphic into the text, click on the 'Image' icon (looks like a landscape picture).  In the 'Image Properties' dialog which appears, the 'Image Info' tab determines which graphic will be used and how it will appear in the text.  You can either type in the url to the graphic, or use the 'Browse Server' button to open the File Manager.  Once you've selected a graphic, the File Manager will close itself and the graphic will appear in the 'Preview' pane of the Image Properties dialog.  You can adjust the graphics appearance by using the settings to the left of the Preview and evaluate the results in the Preview pane.

The WYSIWYG editor Image Properties dialog also allows you to assign a link to the graphic when it is clicked.  Using the 'Link' tab you can enter a url to be sent to, or use the 'Browse Server' button to bring up the 'Insert/Modify Link' Manager.  This window allows you to easily select from any of the pages on the site in either the 'hierarchy' or as a 'standalone page' which returns you to the Image Properties dialog.  You may also link to a specific module on a page by using the 'Click Here to Link to Content' link in the top center.  This will bring up a copy of the web site, but you'll notice that all the 'chrome' menu bars now have replace the module menu with 'module type - Link to This Module'.  Browse to the desired page and click on the 'module type - Link to This Module' to select it and be returned to the 'Insert/Modify Link' Manager, where you can click the 'OK' button to return to the Image Properties dialog.  Or you may link to a file by clicking on the 'Switch to File Manager' link in the upper right corner of the 'Insert/Modify Link' Manager.  You may also select how the 'link' opens when clicked by selecting a 'Target' in the 'Links' tab of the Image Properties dialog.  Click OK, to place the image in the text.  You may manage existing graphics by dragging them around, or right-click to bring up a menu to change link or graphic settings.  As you can see, there is a limited amount of flexibility even at this point.  

However, let's say you want to associate graphics with the content, not necessarily embed them within it.  You can attach files to the text item  by turning this feature on using the 'Files' tab in the module Configuration Settings dialog.  This will activate an area below the WYWSIWYG editor to select and attach up to 10 files.  You can delete or rearrange the attached files using this same area.  The default setting on the 'Files' tab is 'This module does not use files' however you can attach files by selecting one of four display styles: Downloadable Files, Gallery, Showcase, Slideshow:

All four display styles allow you to set the Display Box.  You can adjust the 'box' placement (above, left, right, or below the content), its width, and its margin.  Exponent does its best to display the attached files within the display box and wraps the item content around it.  Any thumbnails will wrap within the display box, so if you do not set a display box width, you'll see a column of thumbnails.

• Downloadable Files displays a list of all attached files as names with links to download the file.    For the Downloadable Files, you may also set the Title above the list.
• Gallery is used to display one or more graphics with an optional 'lightbox' display.  You may select to only display the primary or first image on a listing or showall view, with all images displayed on an item or show view.  You can set the size of the thumbnails and their placement in relation to the primary image.
• Showcase is used to display one or more graphics with a larger version of the current/selected graphic.  This also can be set to only display the pimary image on a listing page.  You can also set the action to display the thumbnail in the larger graphic by either a click or hover.
• Slideshow is used to display a set of graphics as a slideshow.  And in v2.2+ you may optionally display the slide title and/or slideshow controls.

This has been a preliminary introduction to files and graphics in Exponent.  I plan to write another article to pick up on some module specific features dealing with files and graphics.

The remnants of 'old school' Exponent are numbered...meaning very soon we'll no longer be strapped to the modules, subsystems, etc... of Exponent 0.9x that were necessary to get Exponent 2.0 up and flying.  For the most part, we've been able to disguise the great differences between the 0.9x coding architecture and the 2.x MVC coding architecture.  This was done by updating some of the  old school (0.9x) module admin interfaces to look (and act?) similar to the 2.x modules.  However this was done at some (resource) cost, and the complexity of having to deal with two different animals.  Therefore we'll modify our release and development strategies to best accommodate existing installations, yet not restrict such a bold move into the future!  What follows are some notes to Administrators/Designers and another set to Developers about how this will occur.

For Administrators/Designers - Putting out less-than-stable code for the upgrade of a production server is NOT what any administrator or user would expect, nor want to hear.  However, moving to a fully updated 2.0 system (no old school code) would likely temporarily disable some sites, and may diminish the stability of a running site.  That is, until some custom features (like a theme?) are upgraded on that site.  So how can we maintain stability (a stable code release line), yet vastly change the way things work (implement a major change without stagnating the release flow)?  By moving to a parallel release/development strategy!

What this means, is that while there will be many bug fixes and feature additions found in the next release (v2.1.1), it really won't be different from many of the releases over this past year (though looking back, some of the releases since 2.0.0 stable could be considered to have required major changes).  And you can likely expect at least one more (late spring?) release in like manner (v2.1.2), but it may likely be the last of the 2.0/2.1 line.  However, even that will NOT be a dead end, because it will be an easy move into the 'next' version (v2.2).  Version 2.2 will leave 0.9x (old school) compatibility behind, but will continue to be backwards compatible with any v2.x themes, modules, etc...  So things like any lingering old school modules (the ones found in the /framework/modules-1/ folder) or calls the old school theme compatibility layer (exponent_theme_xxx) will simply NOT exist (meaning the page will probably crash/break)!  However, things like YUI2/YUI3 (javascript/styling library) will still be fully available, but begin moving into a background role.  What will take front, center stage will be a reliance on 'Twitter Bootstrap' (styling library) and 'jQuery' (javascript library)!  We may also leave PHP v5.2.x compatibility behind since v5.5.x is about to be released and the use of v5.3 itself is no longer recommended.  The biggest change found in v2.2 will be a moderate change to the database which will prevent regressing to an earlier version (except by using an EQL backup)!  In fact, installing the v2.2 code on an existing site will give you the impression the site was wiped out...until you run and complete the 'upgrade/install' process!  So the big question is how can we move from a fully stable v2.1.2 to a fully stable v2.2?

Well the answer is to have both a stable release line (v2.1.x) and an unstable pre-release line (v2.2.x) running simultaneously.  In some respects, we already do this with the stable release ('master' branch of the git code repo) and the working development code ('develop' branch of the git code repo).  The BIG departure will be that unlike the 'develop' branch which is updated moment by moment and may be broken at times, the 'unstable' release will only be created as needed and should be a working set of code.  Therefore, when you see v2.1.1 hit the street in the near future, you can expect the release of v2.2.0-alpha1 almost simultaneously.  Any changes made to the v2.1.x line will also appear in the v2.2.x code, so if there are any future updates to the v2.0/2.1 line, it'll already be in the v2.2 code.  Then once v2.2 becomes stable, the v2.0/2.1 line would only receive critical patch updates, with the intent being a move to the v2.2 line.

This strategy should allow for the stability needed by most production sites, and yet allow (early) access to new features in a somewhat less than 'bleeding edge' manner.  For all intents and purposes, v2.2.0-alpha1 should be fully functional, but will NOT have been tested under many scenarios.

For Developers - Most of the changes will affect how we develop and release software updates, but primarily how we manage code branches.  Though these won't be much different from how we've been managing code using the Git-Flow paradigm.  For the most part, 'master' will (always) still be the most recent stable release.  'Develop' will still be the primary place for code updates to the stable release...in this case prep for a possible v2.1.2, but NOT the move to Twitter-Bootstrap, nor the Container 2.0 changes.

The big change however, will be the creation of several new branches of code in the git repo.  There is already a new branch called 'feature/container2' which will become v2.2.0-alpha1.  It already holds container 2.0, Twitter-Bootstrap, and a new bootstraptheme.  These are the major changes slated for v2.2.0.  The 'feature/container2' branch will be updated (merged) from the 'develop' branch on a regular (daily?) basis.  Conversely, the 'develop' branch will NOT be updated from 'feature/container2' until just prior to the release of v2.2.0 (stable).  We may also create a new 'hotfix' branch based on master AFTER the release of v2.1.1.  It will be where any fixes for v2.1.1 would be coded and will be merged/updated into 'develop' (which in turn is merged/updated into 'feature/container2').  We will also create an 'unstable' branch as a substitute for pulling from the the repo using a tag like v2.2.0-alpha1.  And as always there will be temporary (release testing) branches created between a code freeze and code release, which also includes any alpha and beta releases.  Therefore, there will be several branches of code in the Exponent git repo:

• master = most recent stable release (currently v2.1.0)
• develop = changes/updates slated for the next stable release (currently v2.1.1 pre-release).  It will hold any changes planned/needed for the v2.1 (2.0) line.
• feature/container2 = work on the next major release v2.2.0, updated from 'develop' regularly.  Will exist until AFTER v2.2.0 stable is released.  At that point, 'master' would then hold v2.2.0 stable (the most recent stable release at that time), and all code work would move to the 'develop' branch.  This branch can be thought of as the develop branch for v2.2.0 until it is stable.
• hotfix = fixes need for the most recent stable release.  Any work here wil1 eventually becomes a patch release to the current stable release.  'develop' is updated from this temporary branch.  We will automatically create a 'hotfix' branch once v2.1.1 is released to hold any fixes that need to be applied to v2.1.1.
• unstable = snapshot of 'feature/container2' at time of most recent unstable release, which is a substitute for pulling from the repo using a tag like 'v2.2.0-alpha1' or 'v2.2.0-beta1'  This makes it easier to update/test on a site using git pull instead of the unstable package release.

So, if you want the most recent stable release, you'd pull from the master branch.  If you want the most recent unstable release (alpha, beta, release candidate, etc...), you'd pull from the 'unstable' branch.  If you want the pre-release of the next stable version, you'd pull from the 'develop' branch.  And if you want the bleeding edge code, you'd pull from the 'feature/container2' branch.

For the most part this is a tried and true approach. It only seems new, because we didn't have a stable branch to deal with when we were working toward the first stable release of v2.0.0 .  Most likely things will work there way back to how we operate now once v.2.2.0 is released as stable.

Whether you own local business or an ecommerce brand, optimizing your company's website is must in today's digital age.

Below I share with you an insightful video describing  some of the ways in which you can optimize your Exponent website (many of which I highlight in my training course at YisooTraining.com). The video shares a number of simple website optimization tips that your company's webmaster or marketing team can employ.

Even if your website is not using the Exponent CMS, you can employ some of these website optimization tips. To learn more website optimization tips and strategies, click here to visit the Web Presence Group, a professional website optimization company that specializes in organic SEO, PPC, social media marketing, content marketing, and more.

This article was produced by Tyler Tafelsky. Tyler offers over five years of experience in the website optimization profession. To learn more, you can connect with Tyler on Google+.