PageBlaster and DNN 4.4

Hi John

Is PageBlaster 2.0 still a valid purchase choice with DNN 4.4? With the performance improvements that I've been reading on the DNN blogs I'm wondering how much of an improvement PageBlaster is going to make before I make the move to purchase it.

Hi Mike,
Thanks for asking.  Now you probably know what my short answer is - "of course it's still valid!".  But I'll give you some more insight to understand why I think so and then you can make a more informed decision. 

The new performance improvements in DNN 4.4 have really improved the administration side. Before the improvements there were sometimes 1,000's of calls to the DB just to build a single page for someone with editing rights.  PageBlaster originally addressed the delivery of pages to users who were not authenticated.  When caching information for delivery over the web it is not really advisable to cache per user because there is a diminishing rate of return (each user may view a page only once, and they have to view it once to get it cached).  Now the improvements in DNN 4.4 really complement what PageBlaster does because even logged in users can expect good performance.

Compression is also being added by default to DNN 4.4. This is going to help and as you may know compression is also one of the functions of PageBlaster.  Compression is a great speed enhancement, but sometimes it causes problems (e.g. file downloads, dynamic images).  The difference here is that PageBlaster 2.0 for DNN actually lets you control compression at the page level without having to make "host" level exclusions.  So if you have several portals with different admins or even pages with different editing roles, those users will be able to remove compression from a page if it causes problems.

Caching in DNN is getting a lot better with DNN 4.4, but caching is never performed all the way up at the entire page level.  What this means is that each "fragment" (modules, skin objects, etc.) have to be cached separately and then "glued" back together with 100's of lines of application logic.  In PageBlaster the entire page is cached in memory and on disk which takes only a few lines of code to deliver on the next request.  With DNN your pages are still built dynamically, but after adding PageBlaster a "snapshot" of your dynamically built page will be taken and stored for immediate delivery.

Friendly Urls in DNN have not changed for DNN 4.4, but PageBlaster has an option to place a virtual name (or folders and name) on your pages.  In PageBlaster you decide what the name of the page should be instead of having a dynamically generated page name so you can have truly Human and SEO friendly Urls.  This feature of PageBlaster works directly alongside any Friendly Url implementation you may already be using so that you can have the best of both worlds.

Compression, Caching, and Friendly Urls are a few areas where DNN and PageBlaster overlap a little in functionality, but PageBlaster gives you more control and even faster delivery by working at the page level. Plus there are several other features of PageBlaster 2.0 for DNN that earned it the tag line of Content Delivery Engine. These functions are being added to all the time, but here are a few that are already included:

Powerful Replacement Engine - Using regular expressions you can design your own replacement functions, or use the built-in functions from PageBlaster.  PageBlaster 2.0 for DNN has over 100 built-in replacement tags specific to DNN that will work in any module, or skin object, skin, user control, literally anywhere that outputs to the page.  Want to personalize the output with a user's first name? How about removing all whitespace from the page output?  Want to change the doctype and cleanup any non-valid html to create valid Xhtml markup?  You can do all this and more with the PageBlaster Replacement Engine.

LoadFile - Like a server-side include, load any file and insert it into the page as content. This file is also processed through the replacement engine, so you can create your content using your own content management system and have it fed directly into your DNN portal through a module, skin object, or directly in the skin.

WebCapture - Capture output from any web page and manipulate it with the replacement engine before displaying it as content.

TransformXML - Works like the XML module to transform RSS feeds, etc. Allows you to use the function in static html, or any module or skin object that outputs content to the page.

On the Roadmap to be released soon:

IP Blocking and User Agent Blocking - This feature is new in PageBlaster 2.1 for DNN.  If you want to make sure that bots do not bring your site to a crawl while they are crawling your site, or maybe you have a particular user in your forums that you would rather not have posting, now you can block them at the page level or the host level.

Content Rotator using Ajax -  Use for advertising or displaying of other dynamic content inside your cached pages for optimum speed and flexibility.

Popup Content using Ajax -  Generate revenue from advertising in your forums, or anywhere in any page that you produce by making specific words "hot spots" that retrieve more information dynamically when focused from mouse or keyboard.

John,

Given that both PageBlaster and DNN 4.4 do compression, should it be turned off in one or the other? Would running compression in both cause problems, or is it just an unnecessary drain on CPU? My initial thought is to turn it off in PageBlaster because PageBlaster only covers pages for unauthenticated users and the DNN 4.4 compression probably covers all output.

Note: I am still on PageBlaster 1.4.1

Hi John

Thanks for giving such a detailed explanation of Pageblaster 2.0, it seems very impressive.

I read with interest your Replacement Engine Feature: Are you actually saying that this feature will replace all none valid code to valid XHTML or am I misinterpruting? Does that include the none valid code from: the DNN core, modules including third party modules, or is that unrealistic? Therefore the site will then output all valid code?

Thanks

Regards

Lynn

Hi John

Wow that is excellent news.

 It is quite straight forward to achieve maximum xhtml validation?

Can you give me an example of a page on your site with a fully complient output, or perhaps a link to a site or sites already achieving full validation using Snapsis.  

 Thanks. 

Lynn

I have completed the set of replacement rules required to make a DotNetNuke page validate as Xhtml Strict.  You can view the results on my home page and a couple others.

I'll be working today to package these rules into the next release of PageBlaster.

Referring back to John's point about DNN vs PageBlaster compression - in the end I chose to set DNN Compression to None (taking John's point that PageBlaster provides better compression), but did not remove the DNN Compression module from web.config in order that I could still use the Whitespace Filter (which seems to depend on the compression module).

Any feedback on this choice very welcome.

Nope, I got it!

Does the ordering of the HTTP modules in web.config affect the order in which these processes happen? I have Compression first and PageBlaster and HTTPHandler_SSL_PA (SSL module) last.