You see, experimentation is not the first thing to do when you’re stuck.

Search for a solution. Someone might have already had the same problem as you are facing and maybe someone already found a way out of trouble. Now, how you search matters.

The first thing I do when I am stuck is (not panicking, actually.. but) to ask some of my online chat buddies who I think might have the solution to the problem. I ask my programmer friends when I am tweaking wordpress plugins and themes to my advantage, the seniors from college when I need to fix something up with the Training and Placement Cell, classmates if I am in a rut with the homework and they happen to be online. And then there was this very recent case when one I needed to talk to one of my ex-girlfriends who is leaving for Delhi in a few days time for higher studies and I couldn’t think of the best words to talk to her. One of the girls in my yahoo contacts helped me with that.

Google is just a click away, but I prefer IM chats as the primary option because:

1. Anyone who has a first hand experience can guide you out better than a static tutorial. In case the issue is technical, the platform on which the tutorial is based might be different, or it might be that the solution provided for your problem on your platform is outdated. Or even, that the tutorial is not comprehensive, or not complete, or whatever. If someone can dynamically help you out its well and good. If not, Google is anyone’s buddy
2. Sometimes, I may not get time to talk to my online chat buddies if I am caught up with my work. Whether you’re going to chat about your problems and solutions – you get a chance to say a quick hello and most of the times, it has a positive impact and assists in healthy social networking.

Now, what if I need to go retrieve my chats for reference at a later point of time? Searching for a page on the internet, and bookmarking it (if useful) is pretty easy (CTRL + D). You can chose to archive (save) your chats in almost any Instant Messenger you might be using- Yahoo, MSN, Google Talk, etc. The method of archiving might be different. For me, because I discuss so many issues which are important to me (regarding my blog, programming, college, friends, life, etc.) archiving chats becomes as important as backing up my databases!  I might need to use these saved chats for reference any time.

TUTORIAL :

Archiving Chat in Yahoo Messenger

You can not only save all of your chat history in Yahoo messenger but also your voice call history! To save your chats in Yahoo archive :

Sign into your account using the messenger. When signed in, click on the messenger tab in the menu bar. From there, choose Preferences. In the preferences dialog window, navigate to Archive. And you’ll see something like this:

Chose the options “Yes, Save all of my messages” and “Yes, Save my call history” and Apply the changes. You can view your saved chat history from this very place, as you can see in the image above.

Archiving Chat in MSN (Windows Live Messenger)

Chat history in MSN Messenger (Windows Live Messenger) is saved in XML files at a location that you specify. These XML files can then be opened in your browser and they’ll show you the chat history in tabular form – From, To, Message, Sent On, etc.

Let us first see how to enable saving chats in MSN :

Sign in to MSN messenger using your username and password and once logged in, click on Tools in the Menu Bar. From the drop down menu that opens, choose Options. In the options dialog window, navigate to the tab called Messages. This image will show you what to do next:

You select the option to keep a history of your chat messages, and also specify the location where you wish to save the chat history. To view the chats later, you goto the location you specify here and open the XML file in your browser (I recommend that you use Mozilla Firefox over Internet Explorer. You can get it from the badge in the sidebar.)

Archiving Chat in Google Talk

The chats in Google Talk are not saved on your hard disk, if you enable archiving them – but in your GMail account as emails with the title Chat With [PersonName]. To save chats in Google Talk, you need to sign into your account using the messenger. Then you click on settings on the top right of GTalk window. Further, under the chat tab you choose to save chat history in GMail account:

Apply the settings, and you’re done.

Not Archiving Chat History but Only Saving Specific Chats

In case you don’t wish to save each and every chat session you ever had, you can just save a specific chat as a text file (.txt) onto your computer. To do this, when you’re chatting with someone and wish to save the chat, simply press CTRL + S and a familiar Save As dialog box will open. Specifiy where you want to save the file, save and there you are! And the good thing about this method of saving chats is that this works on any instant messenger.

So now whenever you need to look back into your chat histories for reference; it’ll be easy and convenient. Did you like this post? Drop a comment using the form below.

I am using Microsoft Office 2007 myself because I really like the improved, user-friendly Word 2007. The new default format in which the documents are saved – .docX, files take up less than half the disk-space as the .doc files with the same content. Thus, for personal use I save all my word documents as .docX files. But when I am to send these files over IM or through email – I can’t be certain that the person on the receiving end also has Word 2007 on his system.

In that case, I create a duplicate copy (Save As) of my .docX file in the .doc format and send this one out so that anyone with the previous versions of Microsoft Word might be able to use it. To save valuable disk space, I delete these doc files then, and keep the docX only.

Just a few days back, on the last day of our summer training, I remember how bad we (me and my friends) got screwed up as one of us who was preparing the project files to be printed had saved the soft copies as .docX files and when he went to the stationary store for getting the print outs (half an hour away from college) it turned out that the guy didn’t have Word 2007 and he had to travel back to college, save all files as .doc and get back to the store to get them printed !

Stick to the Doc!

It is difficult (but very interesting) to tell them how programming and blogging are related to each other and what factors decide the extent to which one should know programming to be a better blogger. Thus comes this post that will tell you in what cases will you need to learn elementary programming, and in what scenario you should be a avid programmer. Or, in what scenario you don’t even need to know what programming is!

Most of the bloggers that read Inspirit Blog are either already bloggers, or want to start blogging and gathering tips, tricks, thoughts and ideas on why to blog and how to blog. This post (in some way) would be useful to both of these sections of my readership. Let’s proceed to the subject of this post.

You don’t need to know anything about programming when:

Today, starting a blog is as easy as A B C. You go and register for a free account at free blog hosts like Blogger or WordPress – this step takes a minute to complete. The next step is to chose a theme (or design template) which takes a few seconds depending on how hard is it to chose a color scheme, for you, to go with the subject of your blog. When you are done with this, you type in your first blog post in the Rich Text Editor (also called WYSIWYG – What You See Is What You Get) and hit the publish button to become a “blogger”!

In this case, you don’t even need to think about the word PROGRAMMING! The blog software (blogger/wordpress) etc is already loaded with all the basic features and installed for you. Once you sign up for an account, all you need to do is write and hit Publish.

You need to know something about programming when:

Sometimes you may not be happy with the images that came with the default template that you chose. Or you may not like its alignment. In other cases, you want to format your blog-post into tables so that everything is ordered and placed well, you may need to add alt text to images, some attributes to the hyperlinks so that they open in either the same window or a new window.

In case your blogging software (WordPress, Blogger, Typepad, etc.) do not allow easier ways to do these – you need to have a very elementary knowledge of HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) so that you can make minor changes to your template to serve your purpose. In case you want to add third party functionality to your blog, you’re required to copy-paste some code snippet into your blog template.

In this scenario, knowing where and how to insert the code would be goof. It is helpful for anyone to know what anchor tag is or how to add various attributes to links and images. You don’t need to learn HTML (or PHP, XML, etc. whatever your blog uses) hardcore! Just a basic understanding of what does what, would do.

You need to know everything about programming when:

You need to know everything about programming when you’re planning to make your own custom themes, or you need to tweak it to the extent that looking up the code, or moving snippets here and there won’t solve your problems to your satisfaction. In this case, you need to know what all programming languages are used by your blogging software to render a blog.

Generally, you need to know HTML and CSS for the design of the blog, while the PHP functions, Javascript, etc add functionality to the blog. If you know all (or most of these, as required) you’re a developer because what you’re doing with these languages is web development.

A special case, in which you must have in-depth knowledge of (not necessarily HTML, CSS or web related languages) programming languages is when programming (or that particular programming language) is the subject of your blog. You cannot write a good blog without in-depth knowledge of the subject of your blog.

There are various free tutorials and cheat sheets available online that can help you in getting familiar with basic. Also, if you read blogs (like this one!) you’ll find various tutorials on how to do the most basic things for your blog – like how to make a link open in a new window or tab or How to customize Feedburner RSS Email Subscription Form. If you get stuck somewhere, search the internet and you’ll always find something resourceful. Read books on programming, web design and development if you need to, or for the sake of interest. You may not need to be perfect, but knowing at least the important and frequently used code certainly helps.

Not being good in programming won’t decrease your value as a blogger – as long as you’re writing great content and marketing your blog well. But having some knowledge is certainly an added advantage that will give you an edge above the others. It all depends on how passionate you’re about it, how bad do you need to learn programming or how keenly interested you are in knowing how things work.

The answer is – YOU DON’T RESPECT THE ADVERTISERS!

Understanding why is it important to respect the advertisers

When someone buys an entrecard ad-spot on your ad widget – you may visit their blog or website once to check if it is appropriate to let them advertise on your space even for a day. And you’ll have to believe, some even don’t do that as they approve each and everyone to earn some quick entrecard credits. If this is your way, how do you expect others to visit your blog, leave comments or subscribe to your content?

Don’t take that as a taunt – take that as a quick tip. If someone is spending entrecard credits or some money (as in Project Wonderful, text links, sponsored posts or direct advertising) to advertise on your blog, visit them back. Read through their content and drop a few comments or subscribe if you feel like. You’ll soon realize that you are discovering far more fresh content this way than reading only the blogs and websites that you have subscribed to and/or visit regularly.

Click Fraud

Another way in which bloggers disrespect the advertisers is click fraud. I have been educating a number of my friends at college about blogging and how a blog can generate revenue for them. I have helped some of them with monetizing their blogs using adsense and other PPC (Pay Per Click) programs and they seem to have discovered generating false clicks as a good easy way to reach $100 pay-outs.

In various forums and chat-rooms people talk about how they get their ads clicked once in 3 days (or more) from many friends.. and still get their PIN and pay-outs. They are making money for themselves, but do not think about how much loss are they causing to the advertisers who spend so much money and time on running campaigns trying to sell their ideas, services and products.

Respect the Advertiser

Disrespecting an advertiser is of no good. If an ad campaign at your blog turns out to be an unproductive one – advertisers will stop coming back to your blog. You may make a good fortune initially by generating false clicks, earn many credits by blind-approval – but such profits will eventually die out when an advertiser won’t be willing to advertise on your website.

On the other hand, if you visit an advertiser’s website he may visit your website back. If you leave him a comment, he might leave you a comment back. If you buy his product, he may buy some from you. The same good principle of reciprocation goes for building healthy social networks. How do successful bloggers seem to know so many people online and off- and maintain active relations with their readership base. Just by giving some importance to these two principles : Respecting the advertiser (and making him stick to you) and principle of reciprocation.

I don’t read hundreds of blogs through my feed reader everyday – but I do visit anyone who’s up on my entrecard spot, go through the content and comment or subscribe according to the extent to which it influences me. The traffic I get in return is of such kind that converts. And this also helps me to discover fresh content that I might have otherwise missed out.

I respect the advertisers on my blog. Do you?

I talked to a few friends and fellow-bloggers (Thanks: Anju, Amit and Anshul@Sportscape) about how they maintain their workspace and how do they like to have it. No one likes clutter (that is pretty obvious) but out of laziness, tiredness or any reason, “crap” gathers over time. I have prepared a list of following for the following reasons:

• Distraction

It distracts you from your work. If you’re writing for your blog- you’d find it hard to gather ideas and organize them. Visual clutter causes confusion, brings in inefficiency and results in thought-draining.

• Wastage of Space

If you didn’t have that load of files, books, potato chip bags on your table, you could mount your speakers right there and enjoy soft music when working (or whatever is your taste) – When I cleaned all the mess from my own table, I placed the speakers on my table for a good acoustic experience, a study lamp for my late night sessions so that I can see the keyboard and not disturb my brother sleeping in the same room, the telephone and important project files. So you see how much valuable space the clutter was covering that later became so productive.

• Wastage of Time

Okay, you don’t like clutter, but somehow it is there all over your workspace. You start cleaning it once and realize how much time and muscle you could have saved if you didn’t have it in the first place.

• Wastage of Equipment

I remember how my cell phone got screwed up once when mom accidentally spilled my cup of coffee onto it. The cup was right on the table when the DSL connection wasn’t working and I was mobile-tweeting. The IC’s got short-circuited. Servicing cost me a little over 750 INR.

• Hazardous

Do you realize what kind of irreparable loss those power cables running all over the workspace can cause in case of a mishap. Why not keep the all organized and tied up behind the table? Always take care that cords, etc are out of children’s reach and that they don’t come in your pet’s way. Also take care that you do no keep the switchboards and extension boards on the floor. They might be hazardous as they can give fatal shocks, when someone sweeps the floor clean.

• Organization and Easy Access

Cleaner workspace allows you to have easy access to your notepad, task scheduler, or such important files that you may need to look up frequently. If someone calls you up seeking some kind of information, you’ll be able to find it within a few seconds only if your workspace is clean.

These are reasons enough to find some time on a good day and clear your workspace of all kinds of unnecessary stuff. This will help you enhance your productivity, efficiency of work, will make writing tasks easier with no distractions and fresh uncluttered ideas. I clean my workspace once every 3 days. It is a healthy practice, and if you do it regularly – not much of a pain.

This is my personal workspace. Clean and Clutter-free

How is your workspace like? How often do you clean it? How does the visual clutter affect you and your productivity?
Drop in your comments and share.

In my recent post where I shared the strategy that helped me reach over 180 RSS subscribers even on being inactive for 21 days, I also told you how I managed to bring in so many comments to the previously published Useful and Popular blog posts. Like they say, the good and the bad always come together – A lot of comment spam also found its way, into the Akismet trap though! There were about 200 spam comments awaiting moderation and some of them could be genuine so I decided to go through each page.

Only a few pages past, I started seeing some racist comments that seemed to make no sense. It makes (non) sense to see that spammers try to sell Viagra and other drugs through comments because in some cases they may lure some hot-blooded humans into clicking through the links, or even buy them. But what do the racist comments intend to do? Why do people want to spread racial discrimination and mess with anyone’s religious or social sentiments? We are living in the 21^st century and the world is changing for the better. Why would anyone want to be a disrespected racist?

Who’s behind all this? I was in such a fury to see all those comments there and deleted them before scanning the rest of them. I didn’t wish (and didn’t care) to visit the included links to see who made those comments, but one thing is very clear – whosoever did that manually or through spam bots – is a sore loser, a person with no social or moral values, who has probably been kicked out of home or society for doing no good but only swearing and fighting.

And even if this is the case… what does it mean to spam the cleaner places on the web? Blogs are a media of free expression and people have used them to vent their frustrations in the virtual world to relieve themselves in their real life. But these spammers need to know their limits. It is better if such things are kept to oneself because such things are not acceptable in a civilized society, and not to the slightest extent in the blogosphere. If any spammer happens to read this post, pay special attention to the following words – Blogging and Racism don’t go together!

By making racist comments, you’re doing yourself no good. No such comments would ever be approved and all you would earn is lots of swearing.

To keep myself busy these summer holidays, I found myself a job as the Web Consultant (and Project Head) with a premier educational institute in the city. In this kind of job, one has to offer consulting services regarding web hosting, web design and look after the development process such that it best suits the business you’re serving. The web project had already started long before I joined, as my company had already employed a seemingly confident web technology and development company to look after all the work. This project aimed at designing and developing a website that enabled people to know about this mathematics coaching institute and enabled online registration of students for coaching classes and online training programs that included posting online video tutorials, tests and solutions, question banks and self-assessment guides for the registered students.

At the time that I joined, only a few days ago that is, the web hosting had been already chosen, the design completed and all the functionality that we needed, implemented in PHP. But then why did they need me?

The design was good, and as I said above… all the functionality that we needed was implemented (in PHP). Where did the web development company lack?

• If you know that you’re going to offer PDF’s and videos for downloads would you want the site-design to be heavy? The web company did the most unnecessary things in Flash. Not just at a single page, but across the whole website. If one needed to add a new page and provide a link in the header navigation bar, it would be impossible to do because it was a flash object. Plus, all the textual data went into the embedded Flash thus making the website orthodox anti-SEO.
• The editor provided for this website (about Mathematics) does not support mathematical symbols! At last we had to make the content available in PDF format. Even though available to only premium users, it can be easily saved and then be shared with anyone which we do not want. But can we do anything now?
  The navigation structure that this company designed and put up was such a mess that 8 out of 10 people that I contacted for feedback got confused while moving from page to page through the website. They just could not understand which part of what page related to the others in the order. Call this development?
• If they could not provide good navigation, they could have at least provided a sitemap. Rather than getting into hassles with the navigation buttons, one could have just used the
• There were two images in a sidebar – One, a 250 x 250 banner that linked to a mathematics contest and the other 250 x 50 button that linked to Tips and Tricks section. Only ZERO out of 10 people that I asked for feedback could make out that there were two distinct images because there was absolutely no space between the two images. The two images, together,looked like a single 250 x 300 banner talking about two things but linking to only one page (depending on where the user clicked).

Because of the cost of web development services in the region, it’s revisions are not feasible for small institutions. Nothing but extreme care can save you from trouble that you might later on face. The very basic point that I want to make here is that if you are into the web development business, or if you want to get a website developed for yourself – you should understand that Development means Development. You have to develop an idea of the website before developing it. The same law holds for blogs too.

If you’re thinking about making a new blog or a website, you need to plan everything. One should know already what kind of audience the blog or website is going to target, how do you want the pages to be and what path do you want a general visitor to take through these pages to convert. Development needs thought. The type of website or blog you intend to have also decides how the site is going to be like. If you’re going to have only a little content, you can compromise on the weight (use Flash, etc.) but if you stream videos, offer files for downloads or embed flash objects, then you will have to take care that the design doesn’t get to heavy without negatively affecting the look and feel . There are various other parameters that need to be worked out  well in advance (adding Meta Tags to pages, creating sitemaps, SEO work like using robots.txt, etc.) before you can say that the development of a website is complete.

The intent of web development services is to increase the productivity and usability of any blog or website. The market is competitive. Would you like to sign a contract with a company like the one I described in association with my office? Definitely NO. If a web development firm doesn’t respect this aspect of their job, then it is quite likely that they will never make a mark in their field.

I’ll share a very recent experience. If you have been visiting Inspirit Blog for a while now, you’ll have an idea that I published my last post before this one, on 24th May. That means, I am posting today after a gap of exactly 21 days! I could not post for so long because I started to prepare for the 2nd semester university exams 5 days before they started on 29th. The exams lasted till the 10th of this month (they went all good, thankfully), and in the past 3 days I was engaged in a major theme upgrade and customization round.

A gap of 21 days is not a no-deal, and you probably know that things like this can simply kill your blog. Whenever I didn’t save for a rainy day, and the urgent need to skip blogging arose due to travel, studies, project work, or any other reason… The number of daily visitors and page-views, the number of RSS subscribers and other important metrics at my blog dropped considerably. And when I used to get back to blogging, I had to almost wear myself out, to revive my position in the blogosphere. Just like one does for a new blog, I had to start building my readership base over and over again, many times. The longest gap that ever happened to be between two consecutive posts, before this one was 11 days! And at that time, I lost over 60 subscribers and my Alexa ranking rolled back by a few thousands. Yeah, it hurts!

But this time, even after a gap of 21 days, the statistics at Inspirit have been amazingly stable! I have been getting 160+ unique visitors each day this month, on an average and the number of RSS Subscribers has incredibly rose from ~100 to a stable 180, after touching a peak value of 206, a few days ago. The only loss that I have noticed this time is a slight drop in my Google Adsense earnings, and an Alexa rank roll-back. I am hopeful, I’ll build it back, soon.

What does this tell me?

After an exhausting yesterday, I was checking out some blogs that started around the same time as this one. Those blogs, that offer equally good and informative content and were as much read as Inspirit Blog 21 days ago, have either the same number of subscribers as me, or probably less. Even when they are active and serving their niches well !

I do acknowledge that there also exist those blogs that have risen much above me, but that’s a principle. If you don’t work- you definitely pay a price. If you don’t run, you lose the race.

But I am just glad that I am not out of the game and am probably going in the right direction with my blog. I could have advanced much quicker than my competition if I could continue. But nasty life. Anyway, I am back and all geared up. Stay tuned for some insightful articles that I have been building up all these days.

How did I do it?

The readers kept visiting all the days I was away. Why? Simple. They liked the content. The first and the foremost thing to do when blogging is to write in the best way you can. Offer content that your readers find useful. I have stressed it a number of times that, discouraging anyone from reading your blog is bad! You should take special care that you’re not doing this.

Is that all?

I had to be away for a good number of days. One would get bored every time he saw the same blog-post over at the top of the blog. I needed a special formula to keep my visitors interested in my blog, through the same static page that they would see again and again. The idea that then struck my mind was amazing!

The Winning Idea

Instead of putting up a notice at the blog, that I was going to be away for a while, I only notified my followers at Twitter and other social networks that I use. I did this because I thought the notice would discourage the visitors to visit till I was inactive. But, in the few minutes that I spent online to check my emails in study-breaks, I used to interact with my readership through twitter, instant messaging and Blog Catalog, etc.

Someone visits your blog only if they know you are there! Interaction like I talked about above, kept sending visitors, subscribers and comments flowed in, to many posts.

The next part of the Winning Idea is the cleverer part. Read on, here’s what it is–

Instead of writing a post on a particular topic, I wrote a list. This was no ordinary list. I compiled a list of all the useful tutorials, blogging-related discussions, posts about RSS and subscriptions that I had ever published at Inspirit Blog into a single post called the list of most useful and popular posts at Inspirit Blog.

A blog post on a single topic would not interest some one every time he visited over the days I was inactive. However, with this list of useful blogs, I offered my readers not one post to read but many. And they all were indeed the most useful and popular posts that I published. The best ones that I wrote here.

I offered the visitor 30+ posts to read in a single post!

How many posts do you read at a blog in one go? Two, Three, Four or Five?

Even if my new visitors, coming from search engines as well as from forums, social networks, and not to forget StumbleUpon read one, two or three posts a day.. they had enough posts still left to benefit from. And in the mean time they were done with it all, I would be back again and give them more stuff.

The Positive Side-Effects:

Building traffic at this single blog-post meant building traffic at more than thirty other posts published here. The number of page-views and hits thus increased manifold. The bounce rate decreased. A large number of comments flowed in to the component posts, than the list itself. Then, I reaped the benefit of better internal linking (I revised a few posts mentioned in the list).

All the side-effects of a writing this ‘one’ list were POSITIVE.

Are you blogging in the right direction?

I am quite confident that I am going the right way with my blog. Are you?
Did you learn something from this post? Your comments are welcome.

A Sitemap is a well structure and an organized model of a Web site’s content that allows the users to navigate through the site to find the information they are looking for, just as a traditional geographical map helps people find places they are looking for in the real world. Thus, a sitemap is a hierarchical visual model of all the pages of a Web site.

In general, there are two types of sitemaps. The first type of sitemap is a HTML page listing the pages of your site – often by section – and is meant to help users find the information they need. The second type of sitemap is an XML document.

According to Google Support,

XML Sitemaps – usually called Sitemaps are a way for you to give Google information about your site. In its simplest terms, a Sitemap is a list of the pages on your website. Creating and submitting a Sitemap helps make sure that Google knows about all the pages on your site, including URLs that may not be discoverable by Google’s normal crawling process.

The first type of sitemap, i.e. HTML sitemap can be added as a page to your blog or website and can be used by your visitors to see the structure and organization of your blog or website and to help them easily navigate through the various categorized posts and pages.

The second type of sitemap, i.e XML sitemap can be submitted to search engines like Google and thus are for search engines to see.

Why Should You Have a Sitemap?

Creating and submitting a Sitemap (Google Sitemap) helps make sure that a search engine gets to know about all the pages on your site, including URLs that may have been left out in the normal crawling process! Sitemaps are extremely useful to submit when your website has dynamic content as in a regularly updated blog or a website with lots of AJAX or Flash.

A Google sitemap can contain a list of URL’s (or even a list of sitemaps!) and to be exact, up to 50,000 URL’s! This means you can potentially expose a large number of URL’s from your site to Google. Though it is not necessary that all of those pages in the sitemap will be indexed but most of them are! and this increases your chance to get a place in search results and also helps you build some traffic for your blog.

Adding a Google Sitemap also helps Google Webmaster Tools also helps you to see the stats about your site like how many pages are getting indexed and internal and external linking and thus serve the purpose of an analytical tool.

How to add a Sitemap to your Blog?

We already discussed in brief about the two types of sitemaps and I have already cleared the purpose of each of them. A quick recap: The HTML sitemaps are for the human eyes, while the XML sitemaps are for the Search Engines.

If you run an eye over the navigation bar at the top, you’ll see a page called Sitemap. That is my HTML sitemap actually and it lets you view my posts categorized easily and thus increases the readability and usability of my blog. Similarly, I also have an XML sitemap made for Inspirit that I have submitted to Google Webmaster Tools.

It is very easy to generate and add a sitemap to your blog. XML sitemaps and HTML sitemaps can easily be generated by using many free sitemap generators available online. Doing a Google search for free sitemap generators can be really helpful.

And, Who said Life is not a Bed of Roses? It indeed is a bed of roses, for WordPress users. Here are two awesome (must-have) WordPress plugins that will automatically publish and update the sitemaps for you and will keep the search engines as well as the human eyes happy. One is Google Sitemap Generator and the other is Dagon Design Sitemap Generator.

Download the plugins by following the links provided above (and follow the installation and usage instructions provided along with them). Extract the contents of the .zip in the plugins directory of your WordPress install and then activate them from the plugins section of the dashboard. After you have activated the plugins from the dashboard, you can configure them to suit your needs from the Options page.

I was quite unaware of the Dagon Design Sitemap Generator until I came across this discussion at Authority Blogger forums. In fact, the Sitemap Page you see on the top is made using this plugin, without which I couldn’t have gathered my stuff together in a lifetime! And XML sitemap for Inspirit, that I have submitted to Google is generated from Google Sitemap Generator.

All you have to do after a one time effort is to sit back and relax, and keep updating your blog. Your sitemaps will get updated every time you make any changes to your blog. This will accelerate the indexing of the pages from your blog in a great way and you’ll notice a measurable difference in search engine traffic and page views per visit, almost immediately after installing these!