4-0, people! Day four of NaBloPoMo, and I’m still going strong. To mix it up a bit, today’s post is a video. My first! Enjoy!
Brilliantly creative? Gigantic idiot? You decide.
Elsewhere Online
Tagged: nablopomo
December 4th, 2008
Video Book Review: Murakami’s “What I Talk About When I Talk About Running”
December 3rd, 2008
Remodeling Some More (or Does It Ever Really Stop?)
Yes! I am 3-0 for NaBloPoMo. W00t! Today I posted Creating a Google Sitemap for Your Wordpress.org Blog over on BloggersGuide.net, so I’m not posting anything worthwhile here today.
You should know, however, that this place looks like crap. I’m remodeling SarahJoAustin.com again, and I’m playing with a magazine theme, which is the same theme as BloggersGuide, I know, but I’m in the mood to play, so bear with me. Eventually, you’ll be able to tell my two sites apart, I promise. And of course, I chose to start remodeling the day after I submitted Continuing Ed class proposals to the local community college. I’m proposing blogging classes, and I referenced these sites in my qualifications and credentials. <bangs head against table />
And because I’m a little obsessed with the Gap MerryMix commercials, here’s another one to enjoy:
December 3rd, 2008
Creating a Google Sitemap for Your Wordpress.org Blog
In case you don’t read my other blog, this month I’m participating in NaBloPoMo, and instead of posting entirely on my personal blog, I’m splitting my posts between BloggersGuide.net and SarahJoAustin.com. Today, I want to talk about sitemaps.
“Sitemap” is one of those web developer buzz words that won’t mean anything to you–or that will simply frustrate you–until you can create one for your own site. Essentially, a sitemap is web file that contains links to every page on your site, and they’re important because they allow spiders to get to every page of your site–pages that they might not get to crawl ordinarily. (Remember search engine spiders can only crawl to a web page if it’s been linked to from another page. And if you don’t have many links to your site, your site might not get crawled much, if at all.)
If you have a small, static site, creating a sitemap in XHTML is pretty easy, but if you have a complex site or blog, creating a sitemap can be a nightmare because every time you update your site, you have to update your sitemap. What’s even more frustrating is that search engines, especially Google, like sitemaps to be written in XML, which is incredibly unforgiving. You make one mistake, and the whole file goes to crap. (Kinda like a knitting project.) What’s a blogger to do?
If you’re using Blogger or using Wordpress.com, you’re SOL, but if you’re using Wordpress.org, the handy dandy Google XML Sitemaps plugin is exactly what you need. This plugin generates a sitemap.xml file and notifies search engines when your file has been updated. I won’t go over the settings in detail, but essentially you should set the plugin to build your sitemap automatically, to notify all search engines, to include all pages and content, to build the file in the background, and to automatically detect your file. Once set, the plugin will create your sitemap and leave it in your main directory.
Once you have your sitemap.xml file, you’re not quite finished. Because the plugin’s title references Google, you need to tell Google about your sitemap. By doing this, you’ll essentially tell Google, “Hey! Here’s a map of my website so your spider will know how to find all my pages. Check it out!” To submit your sitemap to Google, you must have a Google account and be signed up for Webmaster Tools. Essentially, Webmaster Tools allow you to see what the Googlebot sees when crawling your site. You’ll see broken links, incoming links, and outgoing links, plus you’ll have access to a handful of tools that tell Google your preferences in how your site is filed.
To add your sitemap to Webmaster Tools, you’ll need to add your site’s URL in your dashboard. This creates an “account” for your site, and you can add as many sites to your dashboard as you like. (Yes, I wish Webmaster Tools, Analytics, Feedburner, AdSense, and AdWords all worked from the same dashboard, too. Santa, this is my Christmas wish.) Once you’ve added your site, you can verify it by adding a meta tag to your site’s <head></head> tags or by uploading a file to your site. Verification isn’t required, but it is recommended.
Next, click Sitemaps in the Webmaster Tools navigation, and click Add Sitemap. Select Add General Web Sitemap from the dropdown menu, and then type ’sitemap.xml’ in the textbox under #3. Click the Add General Web Sitemap button, and you’re ready to go. It can take a few hours for Google to crawl your sitemap, but in any case, it doesn’t take too long.
And there you have it. As long as you keep your Google XML Sitemaps plugin updated, every time you make a change to your site’s files, Google (and anyone else you submit your sitemap to) will be notified of those site changes. Easy peasy!
December 1st, 2008
December is NaBloPoMo on SarahJoAustin.com
Today is December 1, and today I’m announcing my participation in NaBloPoMo. If that strange word means nothing to you, then let me define it: National Blog Posting Month. Yeah, there’s an organization that promotes posting to your blog every day of the month, and it’s just what I need to get me excited about blogging again.
Not that I lost my enthusiasm. I’ve just been getting my blogging fix at work because we’re using WordPress as a content management system, so I’ve been playing with it and completely neglecting my readers here and on my other blog. Sorry about that.
I have a whole list of things to right about: book reviews, theater reviews, concert reviews, Sarah’s Favorites 2008 + all the crazy stuff I’ve been learning about blogging on my work blog. Sheesh! I’ll be splitting my posts between A Fool of Myself and BloggersGuide.net because let’s face it, it’s December, which is pretty crazy for most people, and I don’t think I’ll be able to get a post per day per blog in December (I’m not Super Woman).
Thanks to Linden, who inspired me with her November participation in NaBloPoMo. If she can do it, (and she’s busy, folks), I can, too. It’s just gonna take some discipline and some tenacity, right?
P.S. This is my first blog post using Flock, a web browser for the social network butterflies. I really like it so far, but I’ll keep you posted (pun intended). I think I feel a review coming on…
Blogged with the Flock Browser
