Final Year Dissertation

iPhone App Dev

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John Rowley iPhone Development
 

Google XML-Sitemap ‘www.’ Prefix error!

On December 3, 2009 in Internet, Tutorials, Website Design.
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I have had the ‘Google XML-Sitemap’ plug-in for WordPress installed for a time now, and everything was working perfectly.

However, after the plug-in was updated some time last week it started showing errors in Google’s Webmaster Tools. The error was the following.

“Paths don’t match we’ve detected that you submitted your Sitemap using a URL path that includes the www prefix (for instance, http://www.example.com/sitemap.xml). However, the URLs listed inside your Sitemap don’t use the www prefix (for instance, http://example.com/myfile.htm).”

To fix this is simple, but I had to search around quite a lot to get the fix. All you have to do is go to the General tab under Settings in WordPress and add the ‘www.’ prefix to both the WordPress address AND the Blog address, then rebuild and submit the sitemap.

If you are still getting errors (which I did) check that any additional URL’s mentioned in the XML-Sitemap tab of Settings have the ‘www.’ prefix, as mine reset automatically.

As I said; Simple! But it took quite a lot of re-building and re-submitting to find the answer!

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WordPress App for the iPhone

On October 24, 2009 in Internet, Tutorials, iPhone.
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WordPress 2 has recently been released for the iPhone via the App store. Not only is it free but also very easy to set up.

All I did to set it up was go to /wp-admin/options-writing.php and tick the XML-RPC checkbox under the remote Publishing section. From there I simply put in my login details and blog URL and it quickly connected and showed me my posts :) From there its blogging as usual; create a post, approve comments or edit pages.

The improvements from ‘Wordpress’ to ‘Wordpress 2’ is apparently improved functionality, compatibility and a much smoother user interface. I must say, its working wonders for me! I’m currently sitting in my car waiting for Ice Hockey to begin, whoop!

The only downside (and I am being particularly fussy here) is that the app developers didn’t upgrade the original WordPress app but instead just made another. Now I realise that this could be to do with the way things were put together in the first instance, but there are rumours of a third version coming out which will be a separate app again.

Don’t get me wrong though, this is a brilliant little app, and best of all its FREE! The idea of being able to blog while I have 10 minutes before a lecture or on a train or in the park makes the idea of blogging much more appealing. Bring on version 3.0 (template / style editing, perhaps?)

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Get some style

On October 16, 2009 in General, Internet, Website Design.
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My WordPress is all styled up!

It began last night, messing around with different templates and eventually fell upon ‘Simplicity’ which is a nice and neat two column template with a similar layout to the rest of my site.

After ‘installing’ (I’m not convinced that’s the correct terminology) WordPress on my host Justhost I downloaded the header.php and style’s css files as well as the index.php page and started to play around.

My background knowledge of CSS and PHP helped a lot, but my main tool was the Web Development Toolbar (WDT) for Firefox. Using this I edited the CSS and could see the real-time changes to the various pages. I did find that some attributes of the CSS a little obscure but this was overcome by trial and error (a process that can be tedious and repetitive if constantly requiring uploads, but seamless and efficient when using WDT.

The header again was a simple procedure, simply deleting the entire current header and replacing it with my own. (NOTE: I also included the content wrapper code from my page to hold the blog and sidebar central).

The entire process took a few hours (about 7-8) to complete, but I’m positive that my next revamp will knock the blog style up in a quarter of this!

Well done WordPress, you continue to amaze me! Now all I need is some content worthy of the cyber-space!

WordPress is all styled up!
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No longer a blogger virgin!

On October 15, 2009 in General, Internet.
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SO, this is my first blog. I guess I should say something important or wisely at this point (fist impressions and all); I feel embraced! I have done a complete U-Turn and am starting to understand why bloggers blog! I’m still less than 100% convinced, but I’m hoping the next 6 months or so will continue to open my eyes to the wonderful bloggersphere!

I decided to (finally) make my account after a while getting to grips with some 2.0 features of the web – I’ve recently opened my eyes to the world of Blogging after years of being strongly anti-blogist! More on why to come soon (via blog, coincidently!) Yes I know I’m a computer scientist, Web Developer and IT Professional, but it’s never really appealed before tonight.

First ‘real’ blog to come soon! Keep your eyes pealed (Although I suspect no-one will be reading this until I have a somewhat more substantial archive and more importantly improved my Google page rank!!).

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