Distribion’s new microsite functionality allows the creation of dynamic pages for all, or a select group of users, without the need to setup a ‘page’ for each user.
Summary:
Users can have a dynamic microsite built on-the-fly from profile information, i.e. someuser.somedomain.com. ‘someuser’ would be text in a profile field.
The somedomain.com will persist in the URL bar
These microsites are much easier to make publicly searchable via Google.
How It Works
When the dynamic master microsite is setup, you can now specify a profile field tag in the Vanity URL section. This allows you to set aside one primary domain, ie. Userwebsite.com to use as your user-branded microsites. Simply specify a user profile field to preprend to the primary domain, creating a subdomain dynamically. This eliminates the typical round-and-round getting subdomains setup by IT. For example.
User Profile Field [p:microsite] contains “johndoe” Since URLs/domains are always lowercase, this needs to be lowercase as well.
Microsite Vanity Field contains “[p:microsite].userwebsite.com
When a visitor enters a user subdomain into a browser, i.e. johndoe.userwebsite.com, they are automatically routed to a user-branded version of the microsite.
In the event the visitor types a non-existent profile entry (janedoe.userwebsite.com), OR that user is no longer active in the platform, there is a ‘fallback’ that can be created from the master template. Simply upload a ‘static’ version of the master microsite and name it “404”.
The basic domain setup stays the same. Pick a domain to be used exclusively for user microsites and point the nameserver records to Distribion’s nameservers:
ns1.distribion.com
ns2.distribion.com
ns3.distribion.com
To use it in an email for example, you simply prepend the profile tag containing the subdomain name to the domain.
<a href=”[p:microsite].userwebsite.com”>
Simpler Search Engine Integration
To make these new dynamic user microsites searchable, we greatly streamlined and simplified the process of Google indexing.
Note: The microsites must have valid DNS entries and be functional before submitting to search engines.
Once the microsite is completed, click the “Submit to Search Engines” button. This will spawn a process to create a sitemap.xml file that Google will then use to index all the microsites.
It also allows you to select which users, or usergroups you want to have publicly indexed microsites.
After entering your users/groups, the platform will automatically create sitemap.xml for the users you specified. This is what Google uses to ‘find’ all the dynamic microsites., click “Submit Sitemap to Search Engines”. This will notify Google instantly that the sites are ready to be indexed.
No action is required when new users are added, or existing users are inactivated. Each time a search engine requests the sitemap.xml we automatically scan for new or inactive users and update it.
Note: once a search engine indexes a users microsite, it will be some time before it gets removed by the search engine should the user become inactive. It is important to setup a fallback page in case visitors come to the user microsite after they are inactive.