All About Leatherman Tools

I don’t know how important tagging is, both in terms of search engine optimization as well as in terms of site usability. All I know is that tagging is another way to provide users with access to information in a classified manner. When writing an article for a blog we have the option of “tagging” the article. The problem is that unlike categories where WordPress gives you a list of categories to choose from, tagging is more of a free style process that gives you granular control of how an article is found on your blog.

This is great and simple enough to use, but if you write a lot of articles on the same topic, then tagging can be a chore. Luckily there’s a great plugin for WordPress that makes tagging less of a chore. You can find it here: Simple Tags. The developer’s website is here: Simple Tags Developer.

Simple Tags offers many options that add value to your articles, in particular, the following are worth mentioning:

1. You can select tags from previously written articles.  This creates a consistent tagging experience for both the writer and the reader.
2. Simple Tags will also suggest tags from Yahoo and the Internet, this is really cool.
3. Simple Tags integrates with the All in One SEO plugin in that certain features are disabled if the All in One SEO plugin is installed.
4. Embedded tagging allows you to write articles and embed tags in the articles, by using the “tagging” element identifiers which are customizable.  This is particularly useful if you’re submitting articles to your blog via e-mail.

There are many more features that we’ll discuss as we develop this blog.

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>