Just another plug-in ????

Ive Just installed Google XML Sitemap Generator on my Rainbow Studios site 3 days ago, and oh my what a difference a day makes !! (yes i know mis quoted but you get where I’m coming from).

This handy little Wordpress Plug-In was recommended to me by a good friend and colleague called Paul from here on referred to as ‘The Brainy One’ , to say that im surprised and ever so slightly delighted at the difference it could make and the potential for its uses is a tiny understatement.

Aside from the red warnings telling me my permissions were wrong (numpty reigns especially early in the morning) the installation was relatively pain free.

One tip though, not wanting to make certain directories and files writable because of the inevitable ‘bugs’ and things floating around in the ether creating files called sitemap.xml and sitemap.xml.gz in notepad and uploading to your root is a better option as far as im concerned and if you do it first (like i did when i went on an installation spree a few hours ago) it saves those horrid red warnings and stops you feeling like a loser ……

The little secret to this plug-in is that it actually lets google and the other main search engines know that you have updated your blog. I was a little sceptical of this when i was first told thats what it would do but never the less ‘The Brainy One’ is always right (experience tells me this not he himself he’s far too modest ! ), To put it mildly i was shocked. I made a test post and within 5 minutes i had google knocking on the door waiting to get in !!
Mr Google Bot was the first of many visitors over the following 30 minutes as we had an online version of a spider orgy on this one particular post.

I’m now quite fascinated by the way this little gadget works and will probably spend far too much time clicking the whose online / who’s been online options that come with the Wordpress Visitor Maps Plug-in. I’m sure there will be many mini experiments to see what can be achieved by tweaking the settings in the admin controls that allow you to stipulate which posts and categories will be included, how often to alert search engines of updates etc. I will be back to let you know how these things progress over time. If i can stop watching the visitor counter !!