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Dynamic XML Site Map Generator will automatically collect all of the pages from your website and create an xml sitemap for use by search engines such as Google Yahoo and MSN. This will help get your pages correctly indexed and once installed will automatically update every time you add or take away a web page from your site.

FAQ

Why do I need an XML sitemap?

Creating a search engine specific site map ensures that all of your pages can be found and indexed by the search engines. XML sitemaps are now supported by Google, Yahoo and MSN and can give the search engines more information than simply a URL.

What does the output of the xml mean?

The XML file that is created by the generator gives information about each of your web pages to the search engines.

<loc> Gives the URL of the page

<lastmod> Gives the date that the web page was last modified; this tells the search engine when there is a need to re-index your page or not.

<changefreq> Tells the search engine how often you anticipate the web page will be updated.

<priority> Gives a relative priority of your web pages.

If I set the priority to the highest on each page will this make the search engines think my pages are all very important?

No; this will not affect the ranking of the pages but merely give the search engines some idea of what you think are the most and least important pages on your site.

How much would you pay for a computer with 4kb of RAM and a few bytes of storage? Well in the late 1960’s it would have cost you around $150 000 but then again it did get 12 men to the moon and back so it probably wasn’t such a bad price after all. I’m sure if the Moon shot was taking place today the winning contractor for the operating system alone would get 30 times as much as that.

Just a few short years later I was happily playing on my super 386 with a moon landing simulator, complete with actual video footage and images galore. The amazing thing about the Apollo computer however was it could multi task, I say the amazing thing but of course the whole lot was amazing, how can anyone get a full guidance, environment, radar and landing system into 4kb? If I don’t move on, this post will end up being more than that!

So (A needle pulling thread)

where is this leap in computer capabilities going? The infonet ! My prediction of the scientific lives of people in the future. Nostradamus eat your heart out.

The buzz is the information superhighway, already a cliché but is really still the future; everything in life involves a decision and that requires information. Forget 3d helmets, we will have 3d rooms in our houses; a trip to the supermarket? No problem, just pop into the infonet cupboard, flick the on switch, say where you want to be and you are there. Walk round the aisles, touch any of the 3d products to get a closer look then pop it in your basket. But it doesn’t end there; fancy a trip to Mars? Get back in the cupboard and tell it then. Sit in the transporter (a multi function chair in the cupboard with little blinking lights) and hover round the surface of Mars to your hearts content. A trip to Bondi Beach?, a few solar lamps built into the roof of your little room should do the trick.

The options are only limited by imagination. It makes you wonder if future generations will ever leave the house again.

PHP 6.0 is just around the corner although the excitement has to be contained in the knowledge that most servers haven’t left PHP 4.0 yet. The problem being that technology just moves too fast; my pc doesn’t even have a floppy drive so how can I possibly re-install windows 3.1?

The good old days! when we used to get up at 3 in the morning, 4 hours before we went to bed and then spend hour after hour trying to convince ourselves that windows was ok but never letting on that we kept jumping back into DOS 6.0 when we needed to do anything properly. Just a few short years later and we have the all singing, all dancing Vista; in another 15 years our pc’s will wake us up with coffee and a message about what a wonderful day it is.

Further into the future could be a worrying time for us web developers, we are set to kill ourselves off. The pc’s of the future will know more than we do; turn it on and whisper into its artificial ear that you would like a nice new website that pairs young beautiful Russian girls with middle aged lonely men and off it will go and build it for you.

There will be a computer monitor built into the wall of every room in your house with some miniature home server hid away under the stairs connected to the infonet. Voice recognition will have done away with the qwerty days and you will have all the knowledge you will ever need in every room of your house.

So; you’re in the kitchen and you need a recipe for apple pie; easy just ask the glass box on the wall. You’re in the garage fixing the car and get stuck, easy again. We will never actually need to know or remember anything (only where the monitor is and what to ask it).

More about the new Infonet later……