TQuizzle.com

I actually read about this little feature a while back…like almost a year or so ago. I thought it was a neat feature, I just really had no use for it.

Recently though, I wanted to embed a PDF into a webpage and remembered seeing this article from last year. I immediately went out to create a simple, useful function to be able to use this in WordPress. [...]

Chris Pearson is a stud when it comes to all things web, not to mention the guy’s relentless pursuit of wordpress goodness keeps me coming back to his blog again and again.
Yesterday morning, a post from him via DIYThemes.com grabbed my attention. It was all about how to use the Robots Meta Tags option in the very popular theme Thesis. While I dont use Thesis, I still found it extreamly interesting and started to investigate its declaration:

One of the biggest problems with WordPress is the fact that it automatically generates different kinds of archive pages that can be indexed by search engines. From date-based archives (daily, monthly, yearly) to tags to categories, these auto-generated pages all contain duplicate content that doesn’t belong in search engines.

Like many times before, he’s exactly right.

Maybe you don’t think its a big deal. Okay, I get that…but think of this:

The job of search engines is to index your site’s pages and determine what your site is about. If you have 100 unique article pages, then ideally, search engines should only have to crawl 100 pages to index your site fully.

However, if you’re using categories, tags, and date-based archives (and depending on how overboard you tend to go with categorization and tagging), then you’re going to have at least one additional page per category, per tag, per month, etc.

Now, instead of having 100 pages to index, you may have 600 pages. Considering you only have 100 pages of unique content, forcing a search engine to index 600 pages to determine what your site is about just doesn’t make any sense.

Think of it this way: Would you rather read a 100-page book or a 600-page book that tells the exact same story? Further, which one do you think you’ll understand better? Which will hold your focus better?

Wow, now that’s heavy.

Functions Hack

So since its implemented with Thesis so beautifully, and since I love to hack my functions.php file…I figured, I’d do just that. I’d put together a super-tiny function that fixes this, albeit small, issue for my specific customization.

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// META ROBOTS functions.php hack for proper indexing by Search Engines
 
function tq_meta_robots() {
// If you would like to disable the ODP or Yahoo! Directory
// keep the next two lines.
if( is_home() )
echo '<meta name="robots" content="index,follow,archive,noodp,noydir" />';
if( is_archive() || is_tax() ) 
echo '<meta name="robots" content="index,nofollow,noarchive" />';
}
add_action('wp_head','tq_meta_robots');

There…that’ll do it.

The first part checks to see if its the home page (since “noodp” and “noydir” are domain specific settings), then sets the proper search engine robot setting to allow indexing, link following, archiving and prevents search engines from pulling extra information regarding your site from the ODP or DMOZ and the Yahoo! Directory.
The second part checks to see if the page is any archive type page (Category, Tag, Author and Date based pages are all types of Archives), or any taxonomy related pages; and sets the information for those types of pages. This sets the search engine robot setting to allow indexing, tells it that links are to NOT be followed, and to not archive the page.

Done and Done.

Greenaid apparently got the simplest of things figured out…”Seed Bombs”

This is the kind of thinking and marketing that can change our world, if we let it.

My wife “Stumbled Upon” this little gem this morning and it reminded her of me…when I saw it, I had to post it.

So the Mac.AppStorm.Net team decided to run down a few twitter clients for the Mac. Well, 50 to be more precise. This probably isn’t all of them by far, but as a guy who already has 5 twitter clients installed on my mac; I don’t really need yet another.

Although, if you’re looking for some (or a bunch in this case)…here’s a pretty good comprehensive list including Native OSX apps, Adobe AIR apps, Menubar apps, Dashboard Widgets, and more!

So I’ve had a million things on my mind lately including new entrepreneurial ideas and ways to expand markets.

I’ve had a ton of articles I’ve been meaning to write ranging in topics of WordPress development help to SEO and other topics, but I’ve just lacked the time to sit down a crank them out. I really need to do that soon.

Seth has a really interesting post about our distractedness. We live this out in our culture every day.

The net has spawned two new ways to create and consume culture.

The first is the wide-open door for amateurs to create. This is blogging and online art, wikipedia and the maker movement. These guys get a lot of press, and deservedly so, because they’re changing everything.

The second, though, is distracting and ultimately a waste. We’re creating a culture of clickers, stumblers and jaded spectators who decide in the space of a moment whether to watch and participate (or not).

Imagine if people went to the theatre or the movies and stood up and walked out after the first six seconds. Imagine if people went to the senior prom and bailed on their date three seconds after the car pulled away from the curb.

The majority of people who sign up for a new online service rarely or never use it. The majority of YouTube videos are watched for just a few seconds. Chatroulette institutionalizes the glance and click mentality. I’m guessing that more than half the people who started reading this post never finished it.

Ben tells his testimony including his struggle with worldly things & ending up in military school; drugs, pain, addiction, and ultimately his release & hope with Christ and new-found love in youth ministry. Ben is a great example of living what you believe…