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Installing Google XML Sitemaps on a WordPress Blog

Someone asked me the other day how to install Google XML Sitemaps on a WordPress Blog, and I must admit I had to go and check it out. Actually, it is really easy, so the instructions are listed below. Follow these steps if you use WordPress and are considering installing Google XML Sitemaps:

  1. First Download the Google XML Sitemaps plugin from wordpress.org
  2. Unzip the plugin, then upload the full directory into your wp-content/plugins directory
  3. Use your favorite FTP program to create two files in your WordPress directory (that’s where the wp-config.php is) named sitemap.xml and sitemap.xml.gz and make them writable via CHMOD 666.
  4. Activate the plugin on the plugin administration page
  5. Open the plugin configuration page, which is located under Options, XML-Sitemap and build the sitemap the first time. If you get a permission error, check the file permissions of the newly created files.

That’s it! The plugin will automatically update your sitemap each time you publish a post, so theres nothing more to do.

You should note that Google XML Sitemaps plugin requires WordPress Version: 2.1 or higher.

Making your whole blog directory writable is NOT recommended for security reasons, so make sure you just set the rights on the two files sitemap.xml and sitemap.xml.gz to CHMOD 666. You can find more information about CHMOD and how to make files writable at the WordPress Codex.

Happy Blogging!

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Ray Kurzweil appointed head of new school for futurologists

American inventor Ray Kurzweil has been appointed head of a new school for futurologists backed by Google and the US space agency Nasa. He will become chancellor of the Singularity University based at Nasa’s Silicon Valley campus in California.

The institution gains its name from a controversial 2005 book by Kurzweil, entitled The Singularity is Near. In it, he argues that the exponential advance of technology is set to transform society by giving rise to computers that are more clever than humans. He claims that the leap in computing power will drive rapid advances in other fields which could solve the problems of climate change, poverty, famine and disease.

Ray Kurzweil, who worked as a computer scientist before turning to future gazing in the late 1980s, first coined the concept of nanobots which could work inside the human body repairing damage as the go. This would be combined with the use of biotechnology to unravel the ageing process and for the nanotechnology eventually to be capable of slowing it down and ultimately reversing it. He predicted that within 15 years that human life expectancy would start to increases at a rate faster than you age. The first step involves adopting a good enough diet and exercise regime to live long enough for the technology to catch up. At least that part wont hurt!

Click here to visit the Singularity University site

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Flagship fusion reactor could cost twice as much as planned

An experimental fusion reactor that will recreate the conditions at the heart of the sun to create cheap green power could cost twice as much as governments had planned for.

The flagship project, which absorbs almost half of Britain’s energy research budget, will test complex machinery needed to make the world’s first operational fusion power plants – a technology widely expected to transform energy generation by providing abundant power with no greenhouse gas emissions and only small amounts of radioactive waste.

Source Guardian Science 29 January 2009