All About Leatherman Tools

I finally figured out what trackbacs are and how to configure them in WordPress (not that it was that hard). Essentially, when you link to another “blog” that blog gets notified that there’s another blogger writing about it. In WordPress, the trackback settings are in the “Options->Discussion” section, and you should check all of the relevant options, see image below:

There’s a great article on problogger.net that does a great job at explaining this particular topic. I do need to learn more about them to understand how one gets notified when there’s a trackback as well as if there are any stats about trackbacks that can be quantified and measured. The article can be found here:

Introduction to Trackbacks

I have to say that installing the sitemap plugin and actually generating a sitemap using the plugin was surprisingly simple.  This particluar plugin offers many options which should be explored individually to make sure that the site is as fine tuned as possible, for now, the sitemap has been created (you can see it here: http://www.skeletoolcx.com/sitemap.xml).

Now what? The next step is to let Google know about the existence of the sitemap and its location.  In the Google webmaster tool section (after you’vie activated the free Google webmaster tool suite for your site), you can let Google know about the site’s sitemap.  Click on the “Sitemaps” tab, enter the URL of the sitemap and submit, that’s it.  Google says it will take several hours for their system to recognize the sitemap that has been submitted, that’s ok, there’s more to be done.

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

I got one!!!

Finally, it came. I’ve been waiting for it for a long while, had a pre-order for months! This the reason I started this blog. All I can say is that it’s awesome. Pictures and a full review coming in a day or so. I’ve got a lot of tinkering to do with it. For those of you that are curious, it’s the Skeletool CX 830849. The 850’s are not out yet… or at least I can’t get them.

What’s there not to love about this tool? It’s small, it’s compact, it’s beautifully designed, a pleasure to hold, to show off and to use. I never thought I’d actually want to carry a multi-purpose tool around, this one is different. It’s got that “cool” and “wow” factor. No longer a strong hold of the handyman, say hello to the multi-purpose tool for the masses.

For starters, the blade, it’s easy to open with one hand, it’s sharp and ready to go. The bottle opener / belt and key chain hook is a great combination. The fact that the extra screw driver bit is hidden inside the Skeletool body frame is genius. How often are you concerned about losing your extra bits? Pictures are below.