DNN v5.0.0 Internal Syndication

by Phil 'iwonder' Guerra

--- (Phoenix, AZ) - With the New Year underway, I thought I'd start out right by installing and testing the new version of DNN v5.0.0. Installation went without a hitch, so no worries there. However, I'm just putting in some test content using the Announcements module to see what the DNN internal RSS news syndication is doing. Having been away from looking into that side of syndication with DNN, I was curious to see if anything new is available to us. Sadly, I can report that DNN internal RSS syndication is below par and is a real disappointment from an otherwise improved look and feel release.

Does anyone really think that a DNN news feed is worth anything? It's the barest form of RSS, and the implementation of what gets syndicated is really confusing. For example, the Announcements module has taken some strides in allowing a bit more flexibility, giving the user the ability to specify how much of the text content is used in the syndicated description. Trouble is - you can change this field, but it only affects items added after the change. Probably a caching issue somewhere, and not the Announcements module's fault, as there is no real indication that there is anything that limiting in the tables for it.

The other frustrating issue is how the syndicated content is built. With the Announcements module, the DNN created feed uses the module's Name for every entry as the title element. instead of the title of the actual announcement title, which is what I would expect. With this type of usage a DNN internal syndicated feed offers very little in the way of driving traffic to your site with it's lack of syndication features. Small wonder, then, that many DNN projects have gone to creating their own syndication routines. That's at least something, but it's not the best of world's. What is really needed is a standard syndication API that is followed by all DNN project module developers. Without this kind of API, DNN default projects and DNN syndication will always remain a mystery to users.

As I've blogged previously, there is a serious need to overhaul all of the default DNN standard modules to include better support of syndication. Every module capable of implementing syndication ought to have the basics information available to syndicate, title, pubDate, author, and description are really needed for a bare bones syndicated content. There are many many other useful options available, it's a real shame to see DNN so far behind in news syndication.

So far, I give it a failing grade, and hope that someone is working on improving it.