Patrick Santry's Weblog

DNN Maxed Out?

PSantry@Santry.com — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 05:00:00 GMT

For those of you are into web tech, you can check out my perfmon stats of the JonasBrothersFan.com site. This site is running DNN and gets a HUGE amount of users:

I just moved the site over to a 2Xquad core box with 4GB RAM. If you look at the counter, it's the Current Anonymous Users. This is the amount of users making an actual request to the web server at that point in time. We bounce from 40 to even 90 at some time. This is a huge amount of users. I think my weak point right now is the database server. I am currently hosting at Server Intellect, and I'm wondering if this is the right hosting company for DNN. But still the performance is OK being that it is all running on one box and a shared SQL box for the back end.

We still run into issues though where the Current Anonymous User count will peg out and then the site will not respond. The app pool is waiting on something, and then the queue gets full, but I haven't figured out how to resolve this yet, any ideas?

The Adventure Continues

PSantry@Santry.com — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 22:39:10 GMT

It has been a while since I blogged, and my daughter's adventure continues to head towards the sky. As you know I wrote about their Jonas Brothers fan site which has now grown to a point where it is poised to pass the band's official website in traffic.

Beyond that, my daughters have now gained celebrity status. Going to a Jonas Brothers concert has fellow fans approaching them about every 5 minutes wanting to take pictures with them. My girls have also started a very popular V-Log where they interview young muscians and artists (of course starting it out with the Jonas Brothers), recently when we were in NYC going to interview a young up and comer, we stopped at the Disney Store and a girl approached my daughters and actually knew who they were and started talking to them as a fan would! Over 7 hours away from home and they're recognized!

My girls have now been on Good Morning America Extra, been in one magazine, and are now positioned to be in a major teen pop culture magazine in the spring!

Kids are asking them when are they going to record a CD. Record a CD?! They only sang in choir at church, and nothing really bigger than that. In addition, they now have other artists who want to be interviewed because their V-Log has grown in popularity that it receives thousands of views the first week of being posted on YouTube.

So now the question is, how do they pursue a music career in Erie, PA? Any pointers?

The Battle For Your Kids

PSantry@Santry.com — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 19:12:45 GMT

As you know my daughter runs the largest Jonas Brothers fan site on the web. I help her out with the technology aspects of it, and in the process I have been gaining a lot of insight into the tween & teen entertainment industry.

As part of this experience I watch how the fans are supporting the Jonas Brothers, who if you didn't know are a fast growing musical talent signed by various Disney holdings like Hollywood Records, and the Disney Channel. In addition, they get a huge amount of play by Radio Disney. The band is also trying to break into the mainstream and getting a lot of play on Top 40 radio like Z100 in NYC, and recently KIIS FM in LA. One of the hardest places they have been trying to break into is the TRL countdown on MTV.

Getting on TRL appears to be a big issue here. There definitly is no lack of fans voting for the Jonas Brothers. The fan base is huge, so why no major headway on MTV? Some of the fans suggest there is some kind of bias on the part of MTV and that the vote is fixed. Could this be true?

Let's look at the parent company of MTV. MTV's parent is Viacom. As you may be aware Viacom owns CBS, Vh1, MTV, and Nickelodeon. Disney on the other hand owns ABC, Radio Disney, Hollywood Records, and of course the Disney Channel. Both companies compete in several areas. Recently MTV featured the Naked Brothers Band on TRL, the Naked Brothers Band is a manufactured fictional band by Nick. Wierd that MTV would put a fictional band on TRL, and the Jonas Brothers are having a hard time moving up the count. Could we be seeing the dawn of a major battle for our tweens? Just look at ticket sales for the upcoming Hannah Montana / Jonas Brothers tour, they're beating out names like Van Halen, and Elton John in ticket sales. There's no doubt this is being noticed by Viacom.

Viacom is undoubtably looking to position their properties to take advantage of the tween/teen market with the huge amount of disposable income they have. I expect to see Viacom positioning their properties (MTV, Nick, etc) to better compete against Disney. I believe Viacom is going to have a hard time against Disney, mainly due to the branding strategy Disney has by creating close relationships between their various properties like Radio Disney, the Disney Channel, and Hollywood Records. This move by Viacom to put the Naked Brothers Band on MTV could be just the start of a major move by Viacom to compete against Disney. The one problem Viacom may encounter is alienation on the part of their existing viewer base of MTV who may not like Nickelodeon invading their sector. We'll just have to wait and see, now that the Naked Brothers Band is up for a vote on TRL; how far will they go?

More on FanGap.com

PSantry@Santry.com — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 00:38:07 GMT

Our little family project is getting some more exposure. This time from the Erie Times Monday edition. They have a great article on my daughter, her site JonasBrothersFan.com and our new endeavor FanGap.com.

The stats are even more impressive now, her site now has almost 16,000 registered users and gets about 16,000 visitors per day. The FanGap.com site has also doubled in traffic since the article was written.

Long Distance Blogging for Erie

PSantry@Santry.com — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 01:33:23 GMT

Peter Panepento, a former Erieite now in D.C., started a great new site for folks who love Erie, but now distant. GlobalErie.com, and Peter's blog Outside Erie. It's a great place to stop and visit.

Peter blogged about my daughter's website which has just experienced some explosive growth over the past few months (16,000 unique visitors per day!) and now we've gone and started a new idea based on her fan site.

Read Peter's blog, it's a good read.

FanGap.com Is Born...

PSantry@Santry.com — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 17:43:55 GMT

So I've blogged about my daughter's fansite called JonasBrothersFan.com and the phenomenal success it's been. She now has over 8,000 registered users, and gets over 7,000 people visiting the site per day. It is growing like crazy.

My other daughter wanted to start a fansite about a young and upcoming actor/singer named Chris Koon, so we started ChrisKoonFan.com.

So with all these fansite ideas, my daughters and I came up with the idea of just creating an umbrella site to consolidate these sites and then aggregate content from the various fansites (or what we now refer to fangaps, and people who are members are known as fangappers). So FanGap.com was born out of a couple fansites.

Let's see how this idea does, and by the way it is all powered by DotNetNuke, of course.

Building a Community Site - It's About People, Not Technology

PSantry@Santry.com — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 17:30:10 GMT

Sometimes in the online world when approaching a project people seem to classify the issues facing a website as a technology issue. It's as if building a web site is this mysterious thing wrapped in so much technology it's just too much handle. Just sitting in the office of a technology provider gets nerve wracking; hearing all the techno geeks spitting out acronym after acronym and having no idea what any of it means - html, Ajax, XML, HTTP, Java, ASP, .NET, Web services, Web 2.0, what all does it mean?!

I'm here to tell you not to worry about all those acronyms, phrases, and geeks telling you what to do, do what you know. Websites are nothing but a different way of doing your business; bricks and mortar are the traditional way, but they both have something in common and that's people. In this article I'm going to discuss community sites since they're a growing influence on the web and generating plenty of interest.

Community; what do you think of when you hear community? Think of community as your own home town. Anyone who's played Sim City should have some concept of what it takes to build a community. If you remember from the game, you had some cash to build houses, roads, and services. Now let's look at that on the web, you have some money to build a site, network connection to the Internet, and some functionality to the site. The site is your community and to build it, you need to provide some place for people to live.

In the beginning in order to grow your community you have to provide a place for your users to live. Granted a site that is mostly static is nice to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there (sound familiar?). You have to provide something on your site to encourage people to want to live there. There are the usual features like forums, weblogs, profile pages and the like, that's a good start, it gives a person a place to live.

When you add these "living spaces" for your users, consider what they provide, at a minimum they should provide your user community with the ability to express themselves. As in any community whether offline or online people want to express themselves and distinguish themselves from others in the crowd. They build this identity by the clothes they wear, cars they drive, and people they associate with. Online they do something similar; they create avatars, profiles to help them connect with others that have similar interests. And just like in the physical communities people go to churches, community activities, and other places to develop relationships with people that have similar interests. They'll do the same on your website, but you need to provide them with a means to do. So when shopping for interactive applications ensure that they will provide mechanisms for your users to build those relationships.

As a community grows it needs leadership and this is the same online. For example, if your site becomes popular and has forums, usually you'll see a few of your posters become pretty prominate in their activity, posting frequently. By providing them with moderator privileges or some special designation you allow leaders to step up, and provide the community with people who appear to have some connection to the site and help build community and participation. You could extend the moderator concept to enable your users to host online chats, or even participate in podcasts or weblog posts.

As time goes by your site leaders will come and go, and it will be up to you to monitor activity within the site and find leaders. This further enhances the community aspect and allows your community to be dynamic.

Another thing to foster growth and participation is to have periodic contests, contests that allow for some user contributed content is ideal. For example some sites have users submit stories, graphics like humorous graphics, basically anything that builds content for your site, but still enables your population to contribute to the site. The cost is relatively low, and if you have the traffic you may be able to work relationships with sponsors to provide the spoils to the winner.

The main idea to take from this article is community sites are not about technology, they're about people. Find out what people like and enable them to "own" your site. If you do this your site is sure to grow and prosper. Good luck!

My Daughters - YouTube Celebs

PSantry@Santry.com — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 03:03:13 GMT

I blogged in the past about my daughter's Jonas Brothers fansite and the traffic it receives. It gets over 7,000 people per day, and has over 5,500 registered users since the end of March of this year. My daughters went to a Jonas Brothers concert in Cleveland yesterday and the band brought out breakfast to the girls for being the first ones to show up. They then posted the video on YouTube, and the...

Are you ready for OpenForce?

PSantry@Santry.com — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 05:00:00 GMT

DotNetNuke developers now have an event of their own, DotNetNuke OpenForce '07 is to be held in Las Vegas in November. I'll be presenting on "Building a Community Site with DotNetNuke". I'll be covering all the great tools that DNN provides for the site administrator to build a community site and generate some user activity. Be sure to attend and meet all your fellow DNN'ers.

Change

PSantry@Santry.com — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 05:00:00 GMT

Another career change for me. I left Sogeti recently and moved on to Blue Chip Consulting Group. I was at Sogeti for a pretty short amount of time as the Microsoft Practice Manager, but in my new role I will be a Solution Architect. The new role enables me to focus on technology and use my web skills to build some great solutions.

I'm pretty excited about Blue Chip, they are growing fast and doing some great things.