phpWordPress new modules: dynamic sitemap, languages, RSS filter

On 27 April 2005, phpWordPress staff posted a list of three new modules. The first was a dynamic sitemap, generated automatically for the entire site. It iterated through all categories and articles and displayed static links to them “for better Search Engine crawling”. The second was multilanguage support, implemented for all static elements on the site, with language files to be added later. The third was an RSS filter, for administrators only, which allowed blacklisting of certain IPs and domains so they could not pull the site’s content.

phpWordPress was a commercial PHP article manager from Spoonlabs, renamed Vivvo in 2006. It was unrelated to WordPress. The release history shows where this release sits.

What was a dynamic sitemap in 2005?

It was an ordinary web page of links, built by the software from the site’s categories and articles. Its job, per the thread, was to give crawlers a static path to every page. On a site that used a database to serve articles, that was useful, since a crawler that could not follow a search form or a script link might miss pages.

The format that search engines now expect is different. In March 2006 the 3.2 changelog records “Google XML Sitemap added to Sitemap plugin”. The pricing chart then listed an automatic Google SiteMap generation module at $19 USD in the first two package columns and free in the third.

How do XML sitemaps work now?

The sitemaps.org protocol describes an XML file. A urlset tag wraps the file, each page gets a url entry, and a loc tag holds the page address. Each file can hold up to 50,000 URLs and must not exceed 50MB, so large sites split their listing across several files.

Google’s documentation describes a sitemap as a file that provides information about the pages, videos and other files on a site and how they relate. It also says a sitemap helps search engines discover URLs but does not guarantee that everything in it will be crawled and indexed. An editor should treat it as a way to be found, not a way to be ranked.

Most current CMSs generate one automatically, often as a core feature or a standard plugin. Check that it updates when you publish, lists only pages you want indexed and stays within the protocol’s limits.

What did multilanguage support mean?

The April 2005 note says the support covered static elements, such as menus and labels, and that language files were still to come. The language packs followed. By the 3.2 announcement in May 2006, Spoonlabs said it offered 11 packs, including Arabic, Chinese, German, French, Italian, Portuguese and Swedish.

Notice what this does not cover. Translating the interface is not the same as translating articles. A publisher with readers in several languages still needs a way to manage translated content. When you evaluate a CMS, find out which of the two it provides.

Why block feed readers?

The RSS filter let an administrator stop named IPs and domains from pulling content through the site’s feeds. The thread gives no reason, but scraped feeds are the obvious concern for a publisher whose product is its articles. Modern systems usually leave this to the web server, a firewall or a CDN, rather than the CMS.

The guides explain how this site compares such features. The Product Updates board lists the neighbouring announcements, including the search update from a month earlier.