All About Leatherman Tools

Unfortunately not everything I’m doing is going to be in an orderly fashion.  Setting up a “sitemap” is a multi-step process that is done after the blog is set up.  I have yet to complete the “How to set up a blog” article set but since this is a living breathing diary about setting up a blog, I have to document every step of the way.

A “Sitemap” is defined as by sitemaps.org as:

Sitemaps are an easy way for webmasters to inform search engines about pages on their sites that are available for crawling. In its simplest form, a Sitemap is an XML file that lists URLs for a site along with additional metadata about each URL (when it was last updated, how often it usually changes, and how important it is, relative to other URLs in the site) so that search engines can more intelligently crawl the site.

Wow, this seems pretty important and since I’ve already submitted my site to Google and the “googlebot” is already visiting my site (crawling it) better get this set up ASAP. Luckily since this is a WordPress operation (grin), many plugins (application extensions) are available, including one that automates the “sitemap.xml” file creation process, all I have to do is install it and configure.

The sitemap extension that I have chosen for this site for generating the “sitemap.xml” file is (drum roll):

Google XML Sitemap Generator for Wordpress by arnebrachhold.de

Download the plugin, follow the instructions and it should work.  Probably the most complicated part is to change the permissions per the instructions to allow the plugin to “create / write” the .xml sitemap files.  These are the specific instructions to install and configure this plugin:

1. Upload the full directory into your wp-content/plugins directory
2. Use your favourite FTP program to create two files named sitemap.xml and sitemap.xml.gz and make them writable via CHMOD 666. More information about CHMOD and how to make files writable is available at the [WordPress Codex](http://codex.wordpress.org/Changing_File_Permissions) and on [stadtaus.com](http://www.stadtaus.com/en/tutorials/chmod-ftp-file-permissions.php). Making your whole blog directory writable is NOT recommended due to security reasons.
4. Activate the plugin at the plugin administration page
5. Open the plugin configuration page, which is located under Options -> XML-Sitemap and build the sitemap the first time. If you get a permission error, check the file permissions of the newly created files.
6. The plugin will automatically update your sitemap of you publish a post, so theres nothing more to do :)blockquote>

There are many excellent ways to get Google to notice your site, in fact, in looking at my site stats 24 hours after I set up the doman, the Googlebot is already visiting me.  How did they find my site?  What does the Googlebot do?  I must answer these questions.  In the meantime, I took the first step and went to:

Google Add URL Page

Which allowed me to let Google know that my site is up and running.  I wonder how effective this particular Google page is.  The response Google gave me after I submitted this page is below, unfortunately not very encouraging, but hey, it’s a start.  Also, it tells you to check out the Google Webmaster tools, I’ll be doing that later on to see what they have to offer.

Please note that we do not add all submitted URLs to our index, and we cannot make any predictions or guarantees about when or if they will appear.

You may also be interested in Google webmaster tools, which shows you Google’s view of your site, helps you diagnose problems, and lets you share information with us to help improve your site’s visibility in our search results

So you’ve decided to read a bit more… great.

Your second decision in setting up an independent wordpress blog is to purchase a domain and find a hosting company that will allow you to run the wordpress application.  I’ll make it easy on you :-).  This domain is registered at godaddy.com and this website is hosted at hostgator.com.  The links below will take you to both sites, and yes, if you decide to purchase a domain or hosting, I make some money from it.  This is called affiliate marketing.  Are these the best? I don’t know, they work for me.

Domain Hosting - www.GoDaddy.com
Website Hosting - www.hostgator.com

There’s a lot of information out there about  picking the right domain name and it all depends on what you’re blogging about.  At the end of the day… pick one that works for you.  Ideally the domain name should be directly related to the content of the site. 

Considering I have tried to set up several blogs before but with limited success, I figured I would document the process of setting this blog up both as a diary of the process as well as to share what I’ve learned with others.

So the first thing you need to know is that there’s a difference between wordpress.com and wordpress.org.  wordpress.com provides the WordPress blogging platform in a shared environment, that is you can set up a free blog through the wordpress.com platform, but the software is controlled and managed by wordpress.com.  wordpress.org provides you with a free copy of the platform which means you can customize it to you hearts content but you will need to host it.  This page gives an excellent comparison of the two platforms:

http://faq.wordpress.com/2006/05/07/wordpresscom-vs-wordpressorg/

So take a look at the page above and decide which platform suits your needs.  This blog is self hosted via the software and plugins found at wordpress.org.  The rest of the information provided in the articles on this site as far as blogging is concerned will be based on this methodology.

Good luck and happy blogging.  Register with us and post any comments or questions.

How to set up a WordPress blog - your second decision