Google XML Sitemaps - Automatically generates your sitemap files whenever you add a new post and pings google, ask, msn and yahoo (ID required). Top banana in my book. Its very configurable with a host of options including allowing you to add additional URL’s which may live outside your blog, changing priorities, frequencies, content, etc, etc.

Add Meta Tags - An easy way to add meta information to your posts such as Keywords and Description.

AddThis Social Bookmarking Widget (drop-down) - I tried this but actually opted for the manually embedded PHP version instead (see their site for details). I found it allowed me a bit more control over the positioning and styling but its down to personal preference. Still a handy addition to the blog.

SEO Slugs - This is a great little plugin which strips out the non important words from your Permalinks. This can help with the SEO process as it makes the links more relevant stripping out words like ‘I’, ‘you’, ‘and’, etc.. However, I did have problems as my original permalinks were set to Numeric (which would render the use of SEOSlug fairly pointless. Check out my quick hack for fixing this here. However, I did stumble across a few problems but have detailed the fix here.

WASSUP - After you have completed your SEO work for the day, you’ll probably want to sit back and watch whats happening. If so, Wassup is an amazing plugin allows you to view realtime stats. No more waiting for Plesk or Google Analytics to update the next day. What this really means is that I can see you reading this.. Yes you.. I can see you… This plugin has a number of configurable options and also impressively allows you to track potential hacking attempts against word press.

Note: Always make sure you keep your plugins up to date. Failure to do so could leave your site open for hacking and you could be missing out on lots of lovely new features!

So I quickly popped in to the admin tool and swapped the Permalinks for the site over to use ‘Month and Name’ instead of the previously chosen ‘Numeric’. However, I doing this, I quickly realised that all my existing links were now broken (including any Search Engine listings, backlinks, etc, etc) so I swapped it back to ensure the site wasn’t smashed for too long.

Now, there may be a official word press method for handling this problem but being in a rush, I quickly devised this method to fix the issue and let the site use the new style of permalinks.

The basis of this plan was to run and compare a sitemap.xml file from the old and new style permalinks and then use 301 redirects within the .htaccess to redirect after switching over.

1 - Take a copy of the existing sitemap.xml file which should list all of the old urls.

2 - Under Google XML Sitemap - turn off all Search Engine notification and activate the manual build option.

3 - Under Permalinks, switch over to the new preferred style.

4 - Under Google XML Sitemap, manually generate a new sitemap and take a copy.

5 - Under Permalinks, switch back to the old Numeric style.

6 - Under Google XML Sitemap, manually generate a new sitemap to match the current site.

7 - Edit your .htaccess adding 301 redirect for all the pages which require it (mainly just archives and posts). Add the 301 redirects after the default WordPress .htaccess entries.

8 - Under Permalinks, switch over to the new preferred style for the last time.

9 - Test your site to make sure your redirects work from the old permalink structure to the new.

10 - Under Google XML Sitemap - turn back on all of the Search Engine notification and save options. Then manually generate the sitemap again which should in turn notify all the search engines that you have reorganised your website.

This method worked for me as I don’t have a vast number of posts on this site. If you have loads, you may wish to script the generation of the .htaccess entries from comparing the two sitemap files.

<img src=”/random/” class=”border” alt=”a random picture” />

User-agent: *
Disallow:

Sitemap: http://www.binaryninja.co.uk/sitemap.xml.gz

I believe it will only work for Google, MSN and Yahoo at the moment but with this becoming a standard, hopefully new and other Search Engines will check in there as well.

NOTE: Make sure you have blank lines before and after the Sitemap line!

HTML Validator - Adds HTML validation to View page source of Firefox. The actual validation is provided by Tidy of W3C. Very handy to check your HTML code whilst you are developing and debugging. - Note not supporting Linux with current version but worked well for version 0.8.4.0 - Shame…

Live HTTP Headers - View and capture HTTP headers of a page whilst you are browsing. Allows you to determine what communications are actually taking place between the browser and the server. Can be a life saver when the unexpected is occurring.

FireBug - Describes itself as Web Development Evolved. It integrates with Firefox to add a wealth of development absed tools available whilst browsing and working. You can edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page, allowing to check whether mods will fix issues without the whole save, alt-tab, f5 cycle everytime! There are also a serious number of experimental additional plugins which will work with Firebug, including an exciting one called FirePHP which allows you to print out directly to the Firebug Console from PHP. I havn’t tried this (yet) but the potential sounds amazing.

FireFTP - FTP Client built into Firefox (opens as a new Tab). Very handy and useful FTP client although can be a little slow sometimes (especially if you have multiple windows and many tabs open all at once)…

ShowIP - Shows the IP address of the current page in your status bar. For those of us constantly modifying Host files to point from development to live servers, this is a life saver!

IE View - Look don’t have a go at me.. Its the customers who insist things should work on IE.. For those who do have to use Windows, this handy tool allows you to easily launch pages in IE.. Saves you having to look for that Little Blue Icon that claims ‘it’ is the Internet eh?

Tamper Headers - Probably the most important (and potentially dangerous if used incorrectly) add-in for the web development process. This amazing plugin allows you to use tamperdata to view and modify HTTP/HTTPS headers and post parameters.. Effectively, when enabled you get the option to intercept what is being posted to the Server, so you can modify the data being sent. Great for tweaking hidden form fields for testing and debugging without having to modify the PHP code! Enjoy but play safe.

Why did I not go for a Sony Walkman (DRM issues….), a Ipod (Baaah, sheeep), any of the other masses of MP3 players available on the market (mostly because of lack of linux support) so I choose the Cowon iAudio D2. With features such as FM radio, 8Gb of storage, support for OGG and FLAC files (saving me spending a lot of time converting my existing collection), amazing battery life and also the all important SD expansion slot allowing me future upgrades to the storage.

And boy, am I pleased with it! I won’t review it as there is a fairly detailed review for it available but I am impressed and glad I didn’t bow down to the pressure of the masses and get an iPod.

Youtube Based Review:

The plugin automatically rebuilds when I add a new post and then pings Google to let them know I have made an update.

The Binary Ninja site map is viewable here.

Don’t forget to create both your sitemap.xml and sitemap.xml.gz files and give them write permissions before you use the plugin to build the sitemaps.

There are a number of bad practices going on with the registration of domain names and its important to make sure that you don’t fall prey to them. If someone is registering it on your behalf don’t forget to ask the following:

1) Will the domain name be registered in my name?

Please make sure it is otherwise you could experience problems in the future trying to either retain control of the domain or even being able to use it at all. I know of one company that ended up having to buy and use a completely new domain name when they fell out with their web designer who had registered it in their name and then refused to release it back to them.

2) Does the provider charge an exiting fee if I wish to transfer to a new provider in the future?

In my opinion, this is the worst one of all. You have paid for the domain name registration for two years and then after a while you feel you need to move it to a new provider (maybe to put it with your other domain names in one place). Some companies feel that it is acceptable to charge an ‘administration fee’ or ‘exiting charge’. Bearing in mind the work they need to undertake to transfer a domain name is minimal and they have already profited from the original purchase. Always check this before buying.

3) Who is responsible for domain renewals?

You also need to ask what processes are in place to ensure that the domain name will get renewed. What email address will be contacted when its due for renewal and who monitors that address. Its no good if the guy leaves the company and the renewal notification gets bounced into oblivion.

In short, choose your domain name provider carefully and always ensure the domain is registered using your name. Preferably, register it yourself as you can always pass over your control panel login details to a third party if they need to make changes to where it is pointing. If a third party (eg, your web designer) is offering to register the domain on your behalf, ask yourself why? The profit on domain names is fairly minimal unless they are being marked up.

Don’t forget to check out my recommended domain name providers if you are looking for a safe option.

All this is then compressed when your deadline is looming, your laptop crashes and you need to rebuild your machine fast so you can get the job finished.

Lets just say that this little wonder has saved my bacon a few times. XAMPP for Linux. Download, follow the very easy installation instructions and your away with a fully functioning LAMP environment including MySql, phpMyAdmin, Apache and PHP.

I use this particular bit of code for every site I build. It allows me to react extremely quickly should a problem occur. 99% of the time I am able to respond to the problem before the customer evens calls up and when they do call up, imagine the joy when I explain I know of the error message that they received, know how it occurred and am working on a patch at that point.

The following function is the staple ingredient of this. It handles the actual task of communicating the error to you. You can add anything you like in here, whether its extra logging to a file or to include more data for a particular application to allow you to track user flow but this is the basic version I use.


function report_error($str_data){
global $str_error_recipient, $str_app_name; $str_error_email_attribs = "From: ".$str_error_recipient."\r\n"."Reply-To: ".$str_error_recipient."\r\n";
$str_error_body = "Remote IP: ".$_SERVER["REMOTE_ADDR"].”\r\n”;
$str_error_body .= “Script Name: “.$_SERVER["SCRIPT_FILENAME"].”\r\n”;
$str_error_body .= “Script Error: “.$str_data.”\r\n\r\n”;
$str_error_body .= “MySQL Error: “.mysql_error().”\r\n\r\n”;
$str_error_body .= “User Agent:”.$_SERVER["HTTP_USER_AGENT"].”\r\n\r\n”; mail($str_error_recipient, $str_app_name, $str_error_body, $str_error_email_attribs);
exit(” This site has experienced a problem.”);
}

The $str_error_recipient variable and $str_app_name should be set in your configuration file and the above function included in your functions file (if you have one).There are many ways to utilise this function and handle errors but I mostly use it for the mySQL calls as follows:


mysql_query($str_sql_statement) or report_error($str_sql_statement);


Don’t forget you can add extra information and also add a file or database system for extra logging,