Virtual Housekeeping
I’ve finally got around to upgrading Wordpress to 1.5.1.2 - I’d already patched the security holes and fixed the rss feed generation bug but had held off doing a full update until I knew I would have time to fix things if they went badly wrong.
As it was, the upgrade went without a hitch thanks to the excellent instructions in the Codex.
One of the reasons I wanted to upgrade was so that I could install Arne Brachhold’s Google sitemap generator. Google is already pretty good at indexing my site but I figure it can’t hurt to give them a hand. The plugin is easy to install and fairly straightforward to configure (the hardest thing is working out how often it is that you update).
Google will index items with the highest priority first. By default the plugin prioritises posts with the most comments. I’ve disabled this. The majority of my traffic comes from people looking for information found in old posts without comments.
Why these visitors do not leave comments is another question. Perhaps they are not satisfied with what they find, perhaps they don’t want to comment on what seems like an old post for fear that the moment has passed. Either way, assuming that what your current regular readers respond to the most is the most important thing on your site is to limit your exposure to potential future readers.