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Notes on Finding your WordPress.com Site Map and RSS Feed for Bing and Google
Site Map and RSS
You can find this information scattered all over the Web, but I want to make a note of where to find your WordPress XML Site Map and RSS feed.
By the way, the Site Map and RSS feed URLs are just for sites hosted on WordPress.com and not self-hosted WordPress sites, but the WebMaster Tools information is applicable to everyone.
Knowing the location of your RSS and Site Map is especially useful information to have at hand when you are registering your site with Bing or Google. In both search engines it’s a good idea to submit both your RSS feed and your Site Map to their site maps section.
Basically I’m putting together this article to keep a list of useful links in place to refer to when managing one’s WordPress Web site. I have some other articles that cover general Web development topics that you might find interesting if you found this article useful. (more…)
Best Free Tools for Keeping your PC Running Smoothly (2013 Review)
PC Maintenance Tools
It can be quite a challenge to find effective software that can help you keep your PC in proper working order so in this article I will attempt to review some of the best free PC maintenance tools available as of the start of 2013.
It’s a well know fact that with use your PC’s performance will degrade if it is not properly maintained. When putting together your PC maintenance toolkit there are a number of key areas that you want to have covered. These categories include:
- The best firewall software possible
- Anti-malware/anti-spyware
- An anti-virus program with good virus detection rates
- Specialized anti-virus tools to hunt the worst threats
- A file recovery tool
- A hard drive defragmentation utility
- A junk file / registry cleanup / general tune-up utility
- A hardware review tool
- A sandboxing tool
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Generate a PDF from an ASP.NET Web Page using the iTextSharp XMLWorker Namespace
If you need to quickly and easily generate PDF documents from ASP.NET, then the iTextSharp library is very convenient. To install and start using iTextSharp, you can download the zipped reference files from their Web site and then add them to your Visual Studio project the same way as you would do with any other third party library file.
The latest version of iTextSharp has deprecated their old HTMLWorker object in favor of the newer XMLWorkerHelper object. This is good news for any developer that likes to use CSS formatting since the older object did not support this. Likewise, the new object allows a number of important behaviors such as PDF page breaks that were impossible to do using the older object.
To make use of the XMLWorkerHelper object you will need to reference two DLL files in your Visual Studio project. These are:
- itextsharp.dll
- itextsharp.xmlworker.dll
Once you have referenced these two libraries you are ready to start coding.
Just to note: if you are interested in further information about iTextSharp then please have a look at the collection of articles I’ve written that cover using iTextSharp for .NET PDF generation.
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Points to keep in mind when working with the iTextSharp HTML to PDF converter (HTMLWorker)
If you are looking for a tool to convert an HTML document to a PDF, then the iTextSharp converter is a great tool. iTextSharp provides open source libraries for various languages including Java and .NET. If you wish to commercially use iTextSharp, you will, however, need to pay for the license.
Keep in mind that I am basing my observations on the iTextSharp port to .NET. The Java version may behave differently.
I personally like the iTextSharp tool, and even given its quirks, will continue using it. Please note thatthis article is focussed on observations of the iTextSharp HTMLWorker object. Significant advancements have been made with the iTextSharp XMLWorker object which you can read more about in another article I have written.
Have a look at the collection of articles I’ve written that cover the iTextSharp for .NET PDF generation.
Here are some of the main points to consider when planning/writing your HTML to PDF conversion function using the iTextSharp HTMLWorker Object (more…)
Total Solar Eclipse Set to Happen Tuesday November 13 2012
A total eclipse of the sun will take place starting at about 3:35 EST on Tuesday November 13 and is expected to last four minutes. This is set to be the only total eclipse of the sun that will happen in 2012 so it is worthwhile checking out. The last similar total solar eclipse happened on July 11 2010. If you are interested in watching, then the most dramatic view of the eclipse will be in the Earth’s southern hemisphere.
Unfortunately solar eclipses are quite localized, so the eclipse will not be visible in North America, except for online live-streams. Check out the link below for the livestream of the event from the SLOOH Space Camera.
Interesting Links
- Wikipedia has a great entry covering the event.
- Also, take a look at the space.com entry about the eclipse.
- The Slooh Space Camera will livestream the event from their site.
