June 2006

On May 16th I set up a /robots.txt file which instructs search engines not to index the Gallery (as well as some miscellaneous other pages). This has effectively dropped the Gallery out of search results as far as I can tell.

My motivation was to save bandwidth. I had mixed feelings about all the Gallery photos being so easily locatable. Now I have mixed feelings about them being so hard to find!

If you prefer to have your Gallery pages indexed by search engines, let me know and we’ll work something out.

If you have other nerdylorrin.net content you’d like to not let be indexed, I can add it to the list. But be aware that while search engines do honor /robots.txt, this should not be seen as a way of making anything private. In fact, one way to look for interesting things on a website is to open up the robots.txt file for a list of things not to look at!

WordPress can now be set up to send emails out when there are new posts to your blog. This is intended for readers who aren’t hip to the wonders of RSS.

To enable, go to Site Admin -> Plugins and active the WordPress Email Notification Plugin.

Note: If you’re not using the default or Tarski theme I’ll have to make some tweaks before users can sign up. Let me know.

Options -> Permalinks now works correctly. This lets you have permanent links to posts that look like http://www.nerdylorrin.net/blog/2006/06/04/sample-post/ instead of http://www.nerdylorrin.net/blog/?p=123.

I installed a bunch of new WordPress themes. To use one on your blog go to Presentation -> Themes. Some of the themes then have options (e.g. font tweaks) that can be set under Presentation -> Themes -> Options. Enjoy!