XML Sitemap Ping Application

First of all let me apologize for not posting a status update on the Hustle 2009 challenge.
I was at work today and had this grand idea of creating a XML Sitemap application that could ping multiple search engines at once.
Well I just completed it, then found out that Ask.com was also supporting XML sitemaps so it’s not 100% complete. It’s currently hosted on another site of mine, but I will be bringing a copy over to the Blog Joe Blog site also.
XML Sitemap Ping

This application is not very technical; But I did get a chance to add some validation routines but nothing fancy.
So here you go have fun with it.
This code is not yet available for download
XML Sitemap Ping

MyBrand & FeedBurner, Don’t sleep on this.

There are probably zillions of blog circulating on the net today and most of them I bet are utilizing FeedBurner for their web analytic. Well most of you may already know but for the small few that do not, FeedBurner now offers a hosted RSS solution called MyBrand. MyBrand use to be one of FeedBurner’s paid solutions but now since Google has acquired the company it’s available to all. So instead of offering your users feeds.feedburner.com/feeds you now can give them feeds.yourdomain.com/feeds this is actually a beautiful thing in regards to Branding. The whole process will only take you 3 minutes to setup and 2 of those minutes are trying to find out where the My Brand service link is located at on the FeedBurner website. I had a hard time trying to find it my first time.

  • Log into your FeedBurner Account
  • See the MyAccount Icon a the top, click that.
  • In the left side navigation you’ll see the MyBrand Link, follow through, its says PRO next to the MyBrand Links but settle down, it’s free of charge.
  • You should now be at the MyBrand page just follow the directions provided. Don’t be scared, a one legged monkey with 3 fingers could follow these directions.
  • Once you configure your CNAME with your host and clicked the active button in FeedBurner your set and don’t panic if your feed settings does not instantly start working. You have to give the new CNAME setting time to kick in. Mine took like 5 hours. So basically set and forget.Feedburner MYBrand

Don’t forget to subscribe to Blog Joe Blog
http://feeds.blogjoeblog.com/blogjoeblog
Do It, Do it now!

SimpleXML in PHP5 is simply incredible

I’m not 100% sure if it was version 5 of PHP where XMl support was added but it’s a beautiful thing. Now with a minimum amount of code I’m able to efficiently parse through a XML feed without any trouble. Before XML support was added I would have  to write a few more lines of code using cURL. Will I abandon cURL, heck naw, cURL is like the Swiss army knife of functions, when all fails you can always rely on curl.

I’m adding a small snippet of code to the Blog Joe Blog Tools page, feel free to chop it up and use as needed. Use your imagination there’s probably a gang you can pull off using this function.

See the wiki page they have some good examples also.

http://wiki.dreamhost.com/CURL_PHP_tutorial