FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) should not be a standard.  I have said it before and I will say it again.  FAQ pages are overused and outdated in an age where Web pages become increasingly easy to use and find information.

A recent client project that I am working on brought this issue back to my mind and after thinking it over in more detail I am writing a about it again just to better organize my thoughts and add some bits here and there that I have learned since my last writing in Jan '07 that further solidify my position.

Misnomer

Lets start with the fact that nine times out of ten, a FAQs are not even that.  They a list of generated questions that the company or organization perceives to be common questions that are put out there before the site has presented itself to generate questions.  When a client comes to you for a brand new Web site, one of the things that most people know and want is a FAQs page.  What FAQs does that client really have at this point?

Investing in Content

The FAQs page is often a dumping ground for pieces of content that don't seem to logically fit anywhere else, or perhaps are added later after the site it full built and deployed.  In both these cases the content was not well thought out or organized.  Nine times out of ten the content fits better into a content area rather then FAQs.

Step through the logical progression of a user for a moment.  The user is looking for something, something specific.  They surf through the content sections they thought it might be relevant in with no luck, then perhaps turn to search, then maybe the FAQs, or maybe even the sitemap.  By now you have forced the user to do a lot of looking when if you developed the content well up front they would have found what they were looking for on step one.

So why not invest in that content in the first place and find ways to integrate and fix the issues of customers having trouble finding that particular content. Create links to more developed content pages that talks about the subject in more detail then a paragraph.  Make the content (if it already exists) pop out a little more using heading tags.  You could even add that same FAQ to the sidebar of a content page that is related.

The point here is with a little more work and thought there are better places to put these bits that the customer will find in the first place rather then having to hunt  in the FAQs page.

SEO Considerations

When you look at FAQ pages from an SEO standpoint they really provide little or no value.  Small amounts of undeveloped text from all sorts of different topics with no content to back it up all on one page.

If these are "really" your most frequently asked questions why not (as I talked about in the above section) invest in some content to answer these questions clearly to better help your customers?  Dedicating content to these questions should  improve their search rankings and make them easier to find via search weather that be your internal site search or external like Yahoo, Google, or alike.

Not All FAQ Pages are Bad

So as with almost everything there are exceptions to the rule, and in fact there are some sites that do FAQs very well.  Linking the questions to highly developed content sections instead of using the FAQs page as the only source of that data.

Podcasts are a great way to get some excellent content delivered straight to you rather then you going out to get it.  The best part my be that the majority of podcasts are free.

I make pretty heavy use out of podcasts for a variety of reasons.  Weather it be work, fitness, news, or just music in general there are podcasts available for nearly any subject you could think of.

Since it seems that a lot of people don't take advantage of podcasts or understand them I thought I would throw out the list of the podcasts that I am subscribed to.

Boagworld

Category: Web Design
Frequency - Weekly
Cost: Free
http://www.boagworld.com/podcast/

Boagworld is a UK podcast dealing with all aspects of Web design and development and covers many topics from beginner to advanced.

Diggnation

Category: News/Technology
Frequency - Weekly
Cost: Free
http://www.revision3.com/diggnation/

Covers some of the weekly top submitted stories from  the social news Web site Digg.com that's D, I, G, G .... dot com.  I think I managed to rip that pretty well.

The Rissington Podcast

Category: Web Design/Development
Frequency - Weekly
Cost: Free
http://www.therissingtonpodcast.co.uk

Another UK based podcast, the John Oxton and Jon Hicks provide a hilarious question and answer session each week that deals with mainly with Web design and development, however there is often discussion of cheese and other topics.

This podcast has a long running tradition of trading pot shots with Paul Boag of Boagworld.com about who is the better podcaster, more famous, etc.

Neverrain Recordings

Category: Music
Frequency - Monthly
Cost: Free
http://www.neverrain.com/

Neverrain Recordings is created by professional DJ/Producer Eric Jordan.  These trance/techno/electronica style mixes are lengthy, but great for getting into work, or for your workouts.

Motivation to Move

http://www.motivationtomove.com/site/audio_programs 

This is the only podcast on the list that has a paid option.  Although some of the podcasts are released for free it might be only 1 out of every 3 or 4.  Motivation to Move is run by Scott Smith who has been mentioned here before.  He runs a number of motivational fitness and well being podcasts varying from 10 minute daily podcasts to 30-40 minute full shows.  If you are looking for help getting in shape I highly recommend these.

Todd N Tyler Podcasts

http://tinyurl.com/4tglhl

These two so called Shock Jocks are from my former hometown of Omaha, and are pretty funny dudes with a cast of regular characters and comics.  If you have some spare time, try them out.  Their humor takes a while to get used to though.

These are the majority of the podcasts that I am subscribed to.  There are a couple more, however they deal with sports in my home state as well in Seattle, so I left them out as most wouldn't have any interest in them.

Hope you find some of them interesting if you check them out!  Anyone have any others that I should check out?

Alright so here is part 1 of 5 of Guide to Umbraco as promised.  The first part of the Umbraco Guide covers the installation of the product.  When you are finished with this tutorial you will have a fully skinned and functional  Umbraco install, without writing a line of code.

NOTE:  If you prefer print materials, please do so now as these articles will get a little long.  There is a pretty clean print style associated with the site that eliminates most things other then the content itself.

Quick Overview

Before we get started, lets take a quick overview of the steps we will be taking during the installation process.

• Requirements
• Assets / Downloads
• Create Umbraco Site
• Creating Umbraco's SQL Database
• Installation Files
• Permissions
• Web Installer
• Install Web Site Package (Optional)

Requirements

At the most basic level the Umbraco CMS requires a few things.  There are a large number of configurations you might be setting up the Umbraco CMS in, and because I can’t cover them all in this tutorial, I will go ahead and focus on installations on both Windows based IIS on a local machine as well as installing Umbraco on a Windows hosting plan. 

This is what you are going to need on your hosting provider, or local installation of Windows:

• A Windows 2000 or above, or Windows hosting plan supporting the ASP.net framework.
• Microsoft SQL Server (MSSQL) or SQL Server 2005 Express Edition
• ASP.Net 2.0 Framework installed.
• Finally to state the obvious, you will need a Web browser to access the back end of the CMS and build your site(s). (At the point of this being published Umbraco’s backend seemed work in most of the browsers that I tested including IE, Firefox, and Safari)

I am not going to get into the installations and configurations of any of these products.  there is plenty of documentation on these, so if you are having trouble use Google for help with those.

Downloads

Before we get into the installation steps, take a few minutes and download the Umbraco Source below.  Additionally if you don't already have Visual Studio or another editor that you will be using to code your ASP.net files, you might want to also download and install Visual Web Developer.

I will be using Visual Web Developer to manage code. This is freely available software from Microsoft, and although you don’t have to use this, but I would encourage it.  During the tutorials this is what I will be using as well, so it will help make the setup a little easier to follow.

• Umbraco Source  
• Visual Web Developer
  

Installation

Ok, so lets get into it.  The installation of Umbraco to your server is a 9 step process, and should take about 20-40 minutes.

STEP 1 - Create Web Site

Umbraco is best installed in the root level of a Web site.  Trying to install Umbraco to a Virtual Directory will leave you with a lot of headaches if it will work at all.

If you are using IIS simply create a new Web site, if you are using a hosted solution you may want to create a sub-domain if you don't have access to or don't want to modify an existing site.  This is what I am going to do for my example and in my case the domain will be umbraco.designsbyjohnson.com.

If you are using a hosted solution this is also a good time to verify that you have an FTP user account that has access to publish files to the site.

STEP 2 -Create SQL Database

Umbraco stores all it's data in a SQL database, so you will need to create a database on your server.  You should be able to do this using your control panel of your hosted account or using your SQL Server Management tool if you are installing locally.

You will also need to make sure you have a user created and assigned with permissions to this database, preferably as the database owner (DBO), or with admin rights.

NOTE:  There is plenty of documentation around for help creating SQL databases, so if you need help with that search around on Google, and you should be sure to find something.

STEP 3 - Extract Installation Files

Next we need to extract the Umbraco installation zip file that we got from Codeplex earlier. If you didn't rename the file when you downloaded, it should be named something like "v303.zip".

Go ahead and extract the files to a new directory preferably.  If your installing locally to IIS it would be preferable that you extract to a new folder inside of "c:/inetpub/wwwroot/your_install_folder".

STEP 4 - Create the Solution

NOTE: If you are installing on your local machine, you can skip to step 6.

Once you have all the files in your staging folder, we need to FTP them to your hosting server.  This is done by creating a solution using Visual Web Developer.  Doing this is pretty straight forward.

• Open Visual Web Developer
• Click the "File" menu and select "Open Web Site".
• Select the "File System" option on the left, and navigate to the root folder you extracted the Umbraco source to, then click "Open".

You should now see all the files listed in the Solution Explorer, usually docked on the right side of the development environment.

STEP 5 - Modify the Web.Config

Before we FTP our files to the server we need to update the Web.Config to give Umbraco the information it needs to connect to your database.

• Open the "Web.Config" file in the "Solution Explorer"
• In the "appSettings" section of the Web.Config file, look for the "umbracoDbDSN" key.  In the "value" for this key enter your username, password, server, and database names into the appropriate sections.
• Save the file, and exit.

STEP 6 -  FTP Your Files

You are ready to FTP your files up to your hosting server.  This is done by clicking on the "Copy Web Site" button highlighted in red below.  This icon is located in the "Solution Explorer" 

If for some reason the Solution Explorer isn't there for you, you can open it by selecting the "View" menu, and select "Solution Explorer".

Once you have clicked the "Copy Web Site" button you should  be presented with a dialogue like the one below.  Be sure to select "FTP" from the buttons on the left side, and fill in your hosting plan FTP instructions.

With all your information entered, click "Open".  You will be presented with the "Copy Site" window.  This window should be a split view representing your local files, and the directory you chose on your remote server.

Select all the files on the left side (Local Machine) and click the arrow in the middle that points to the right.  This process may take several minutes depending on your connection details.  Let it finish, now's a good time to get a cup of coffee or tea.

NOTE:  At times Visual Web Developer may look like it's not responding, let it run several minutes, chances are it is working just fine.

STEP 7 - Apply User Permissions

Umbraco requires ASP.Net to have modify (write) permission on several folders for correct operation. The directories you need to set these "modify" permissions on are:

• bin
• config
• css
• data
• media
• umbraco
• usercontrols
• xslt

If you are using Plesk on your hosted solution, follow the steps below

NOTE: If you are installing locally skip this section.

1. Log in to your Plesk Control Panel.
2. Click on your domain/sub-domain where you uploaded your Umbraco source files.
3. Click on "Web Directories".
4. Click the padlock icon next to the appropriate folder.
5. Uncheck the box "Allow inheritable permissions from the parent to propagate..."
6. Check the box next to "Replace permission entries on all child objects..."
7. Click on the user named like this: "Plesk IIS WP User (IUSR_)"
8. Under the column to the right, "Check" the box next to "Modify", then click OK.

1. Repeat steps 2-6 for all the other listed "Plesk" user(s).

For an IIS install, the process is much the same, with a couple of exceptions. 

NOTE: If you are using a hosted solution, skip this section.

1. Right click the folder, and select "Properties".
2. Click the "Security" tab, and click the "Edit" button.  (If you are using Windows Vista you may get a security warning, click "Continue" if you get this warning.)
3. Find and highlight the "ASPNET" user in the "Groups or usernames" section.
4. Check the "Modify" and "Write" permissions for the user.
5. Click "Ok"
6. Repeat steps 1 - 5 for each of the folders above.

STEP 8 - Run Umbraco Web Installation

At this point everything should be in place to begin Umbraco's Web installation package which will setup the necessary database tables, files, and modifications to get a base site started.  This can be started by going to the site you installed Umbraco to followed by /install.  So in my case "umbraco.designsbyjohnson.com/install".

• Click "Next" on the introduction screen

• Click "Next" to accept the Licence Agreement
• Click "Next" to allow Umbraco to populate your database.
• The next step is a simple verification of your permissions.  Click "next to continue.
• Enter in your admin password, and click "Next".
  Note: This field for whatever reason is entered in clear text.  So be careful when entering this information when others are around.

• Finished!  You should now be at a finished screen of the Web Installation.
  NOTE:  Often times however Umbraco is unable to write the correct values, and so one more step may be required.  Read through the Finished screen and see if you need to perform the following steps.

• Open the Web.Config file, and update the AppSetting key umbracoConfigurationStatus to the value of '3.0.3'.

STEP 9 - Install Web Site Package

The final step to installation is an optional one, and that is to install a pre-built Web site package.  If you are building an Umbraco site from scratch this isn't a necessary step, but for the purposes of this tutorial going forward we will install and use the Creative Web site package.

• Click the "Launch Umbraco" button at the bottom of the Web installation complete page. If for any reason you have already closed this, simply navigate to your domain and add /umbraco to the end of it.
• Login to Umbraco using "admin" for the username, and the password you setup during the Web install.
• Once you are logged in, click the "Developer" section at the bottom of the page.
• Right click on the "Macro" folder and select "Import Package".
• In the Import Package dialogue, click the link at the bottom that says "Go to the package repository".
• Click on "Website Packages"
• Click on "Creative Web Site Package"
• Click "Download and Install package" and confirm the popup by clicking "OK".
• Accept the licence by checking the "Accept License" checkbox, then click the "Install Package" button.
• Congratulations you have installed the Web site package!  Click the "Click here to view your site" link.

This should give you a live working site similar to my mine which you can view using the link below.

Finished Umbraco Installation

Wrap Up

That's it!  Good job, you should now have a fully installed Umbraco installation on your server.  For now we will hold off on diving into anymore of the back end then we have already seen.In the next part we will get into the creation of data types and templates which are the core building blocks to creating simple pages in Umbraco.