Optimize Your WordPress Blog for Search Engines with Google Sitemap Plugin

If you perform a lookup on “SEO for blog” you will probably see an article or two about adding XML sitemap to the root of your blog to help Google find your pages. A blog is a dynamic structure which means Google sometimes finds it tough to navigate through your pages. Now, if you have used a simple Permalinks structure for your blog, you may not have too much trouble with Google, but in general people who provide XML sitemap for Google and other search engines often see better results.

Well. If you have looked at a XML sitemap before, it may have scared the heck out of you. But the beauty of WordPress is that there is always someone out there who comes up with a useful plug-in that addresses the basic needs of everyday bloggers. Google Sitemap is a free WordPress plug-in that allows you to create a super XML sitemap for your blog without too much fuss.

Once you download and install Google XML Sitemap plugin, you are set to go. You need to make sure that you create a blank sitemap.xml file on your root. You will then have to manually build your very first WordPress XML Sitemap. Below is the message you get when you run the plug-in to create your first sitemap:

Google Sitemap plug-in comes with lots of features. First you can choose how you want to provide your sitemap to Google. You can provide it as a XML file or if it is too large, you can go with the zipped version. You can also choose which engines to notify about your blog. You can choose Ask, MSN, Yahoo, and Google of course (keep in mind that you need a developer token to activate the Yahoo! feature).

There are a few useful features with this plug-in. You can define how your posts are prioratized. You can choose the number of comments or just go with one priority for all posts. You can also define what pages to include in your sitemap using a simple check-box form. You can also choose the location of your sitemap, but it should usually be on the root on your blog.

Finally, you can put priorities down for your pages manually as well. So basically Google Sitemap plug-in allows you to create fairly sophisticated sitemaps without having to write a single line of code. This plug-in is going for free and you can download it here. Don’t go overboard though.

Run PHP Scripts On Your Blog with RunPHP

Have you ever wondered about runnings some of the cool free PHP scripts that are out there on your blog? I have. The PHP community is just wonderful. Folks contribute code left and right to help push the Open Source movement forward. But if you try to run PHP codes on your WordPress plug-in without making changes to the underlying code, you are out of luck.

Thankfully, the good folks at RunPHP have developed THE plugin for running PHP scripts on your WordPress blog. All you have to do is download RunPHP and enable it on your blog. You can then choose to Run PHP per post or page. You can choose who has the right to run PHP scripts on your blog.

runPHP widget then shows up under each post/page that you want to run PHP code on. If you have the right access level, you can just put the code down, and bam. Your WordPress blog can now run almost any script that is out there.

A Word of Caution: RunPHP is a very powerful script but can also compromise your blog’s security. If your blog is hacked, god knows what can be implemented on your blog. Having said that, if you have secure scripts that you want to run on your WordPress blog, now you can.

Add Google Map Pin To Your WordPress Blog with Viva Blogpins

I am sure you have seen some of these fancy Web 2.0 sites that have an interactive Google Map application that pin-point all kinds of activity on them. These Google Maplets can be very effective as a visual aid for folks, and they are plain cool.

Thanks to the good folks at MediaTricks, you can add these cool maplets to your WordPress blog with a snap of a finger. With Viva Blogpins you can upload images and tag them on your posts. What I like about this plugin is the possibility of using it on WordPress Mu to show all the bloggers that you are using your WordPress multi-user platform. Now, you can probably write a piece of code that does the same thing, but the code is already made available by Mediatricks, so why re-invent the wheel. Here is the link: Viva Blogpins – Download Page

Should You Go With WordPress.com or Self-Host WordPress

WordPress is the best blogging platform hands down. A couple of years ago people had doubt about it, but nowadays there is no doubt. But for folks who are getting started with blogging, choosing the right WordPress version may be a bit complicated. WordPress comes in four versions:

• WordPress.com (hosted by WordPress)
• WordPress Self-Host (you can host it yourself)
• WordPress Mu (you can host multiple blogs with it).
• WordPress VIP

WordPress.com version of WordPress is the same version that you get from WordPress.org, but it is hosted on WordPress.com. The domain that you get will be a WordPress domain, and there will be restrictions. For instance, you will have to pay to edit the CSS and you can’t change things and move files around as easily as you could with self-hosted WordPress.

The self-host version of WordPress can be downloaded and installed on your server. You can get a web hosting service from DreamHost or GoDaddy, and put the files on your account, and install it in less than 5 minutes. This is the best option to choose if you want to have more control over your blog and avoid paying premium fees to WordPress.

WordPress Mu is similar to the previous version, but allows folks to sign up and create their own blogs on your server. This is very useful if you want to create blog networks. The challenge with WordPress Mu is server resources. If you own your super server, then you can use WordPress Mu to create killer communities, but a normal hosting plan can make WordPress Mu slow and painful for your bloggers.

WordPress realized a while back that there may be a need for VIP hosting for folks who decide to stay with WordPress.com. The WordPress VIP is not open to everyone, and you’ve got to be a celebrity in the blogging world or someone like Anderson Cooper to get your hands on the service. But if you are lucky enough to get accepted to this program, you get promoted in the blog of the day part of WordPress.com, and WordPress does promote you on their publishers blog as well. Obviously, you will have to abide by requirements set by WordPress folks, but the traffic that you get with VIP promotions could be monumental.

I personally recommend going with a self-hosted version of WordPress right from the start. If you feel intimated by the whole process of getting your own hosting account and installing things, you can try WordPress.com, but at the end of the day, if you want to be a superstar blogger, you should definitely host your blog yourself. The next step for superstars is getting a couple of servers and moving away from shared hosting, but that is way down the line (when you have a real business going with your blog).

WordPress 2.6.3 Security Patch Released

The good folks at WordPress have just released a new security patch for WordPress platform (WP 2.6.3). Here is the deal:

A vulnerability in the Snoopy library was announced today. WordPress uses Snoopy to fetch the feeds shown in the Dashboard. Although this seems to be a low risk vulnerability for WordPress users, we wanted to get an update out immediately.

For those of you who are a bit more technical:

This can be exploited to inject arbitrary shell commands via a script calling the “fetch()” or “submit()” function with an URL controlled by the attacker.

This is a highly critical security item, so you should download yours as soon as possible.

Customize Your WordPress 404 Page

If you have been a webmaster before, you are probably familiar with the concept behind error pages. The most popular error page is a 404 page. That’s the page where your readers will land if they type something wrong or if they reach a page that does not exist. So it is essential for every WordPress blog owner to customize their 404 page to retain the misguided traffic, if possible.

Unfortunately, most WordPress themes do not come with a 404 page. And some of them which do have 404 pages are not optimized to retain traffic. So if your WordPress blog doesn’t have a 404 page here is what you need to do:

1. Go to your default template and copy the 404.php page. You can also grab the page.php file from your current theme and rename it to 404.php.
2. One thing that I like to do on a 404 page is showing people as many navigation links as possible to move them through my site. Many 404 pages just come with the standard message of “this page does not exist.” But that is not optimized, so you need to optimize your 404 page to keep some of the traffic that is reaching your 404 page by mistake.
3. It is also possible to show different 404 pages to your readers based on the keyword that they have used to reach your error page. Think about the possibilities here. But of course that’s a more advanced topic.
4. I personally like to list all my categories on my 404 page. The way to do it is by using the list_cats function. Here is what I personally use (I put it right where it says “edit this entry”:
   list_cats(FALSE, '', 'ID',
'asc', '', TRUE, FALSE,
FALSE, FALSE, TRUE,
FALSE, FALSE, '', FALSE,
'', '', '1,33',
TRUE);

5. The above function lists your categories and subcategories in form of an unordered list. You should probably customize your CSS to make your page look like what you prefer.
6. I also use Google custom search on my 404 pages. I put one at the very top of the page and try to help people search through my posts. And they may click on some of my ads and nab me a penny or two.

As you see, creating a 404 page for WordPress is not that hard. WordPress is so powerful that you can create complex solutions with a few lines of code. Having said that, you should never settle for the default template that comes with your WordPress theme (to test it out just test an address that you know is not valid). I will talk about Google custom search in another post for those having trouble implementing it on WordPress.

OpenX Widget for WordPress: Run Your Own Ad Server

If you own a heavy content based WordPress blog, you are probably familiar with the challenges of getting sponsors for your blog and serving ads without an ad server. You can always take advantage of ad services that are out there, but most of these solutions are costly and often very complex to implement. That’s where OpenX comes in. It’s an open source ad server system that allows you to host your own ads. It is by no means an inferior solution as it allows you to do all kinds of things with your ads including but not limited to geo-targeting, IP-targeting, agent-tracking, and …

OpenX Widget for WordPress makes implementing OpenX on your blog like a piece of cake. All you have to do is download the plugin and enable it on your blog. Then you can simply use it to rotate ads in your content or sidebar. Here is how you can install this plugin:

1. Drop the attached file in the /wp-content/plugins folder of your WordPress installation.
2. Enable the plugin in the WordPress administration console.
3. Setup the OpenX server in the OpenX-WP setup page.
4. You can now add OpenX banners within your posts using the macro “{openx:NN}” where NN is the OpenX zone ID that you want to display.
5. This plugin also provides a widget which can be added to the WordPress sidebar.

You can now pit your Adsense ads against ads from YSM to find out which one performs the best (no, it’s not against the policy if you are only showing one of them at a time). How cool is that? Try it today for yourself. It’s free.