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We just helped a client install a new Wordpress blog, using version 2.9, and found that scheduled posting isn’t working like it should. This means that when you pre-write a post, and set it to publish on a certain day and time, the day and time passes, and no post appears.
In digging into this issue, it seems to be a problem with Wordpress 2.9, specifically the cron function.
There are several fixes you can try:
Option #1: If you’re technically minded, you can update your wp-includes/cron.php file, using the instructions found here: Fix missing posts in Wordpress
The problem with this is that you may have to update this same setting each time you upgrade Wordpress. May work if you have just 1 blog, harder to maintain if you have many. I, personally, don’t want to have to remember to do this, so I’d choose another option.
Option #2: If you don’t want to mess with php code (and I don’t blame you) the other option you have is to reupload a few key files into your wp-includes. You would do this via FTP.
You can get those files courtesy of Denis De Bernardy (maker of my favorite blog theme, Semiologic) here
This is the option we chose for our client, and it’s working well so far.
Option #3: You can downgrade to the previous version of Wordpress. Before trying this, be sure you backup your blog and files!! It should be as simple as reuploading the previous version of Wordpress and rolling back that way. But again, make a backup copy of your blog just in case this doesn’t work.
If you haven’t upgraded to 2.9 yet, I’d suggest holding off to see if the 2.9.1 version addresses these issues.
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Google search is going to start looking different in the next few months, as Google has signed a deal with Twitter.com to start indexing tweets.
Similarly, Microsoft has signed deals with Facebook and Twitter to start indexing updates in the search engine Bing.com.
These changes mean your wisdom won’t be shared just with those in your immediate tweetstream or newsfeed, but could, perhaps, be listed in the search engines and archived for the world at large.
These moves are good for those of you focused on providing unique content and topic relevant tweets- you will have more ways to be found and noticed.
The downside of this process may be two-fold, though. First, your tweets may not remain indexed as long, so your ranking won’t stay constant. The reason I think this is because the rate of tweeting is so high, and newer tweets will always be considered fresher (and therefore potentially more relevant) than older ones. So any ranking you get may not last that long.
The second downside would be for content that is repeated or duplicate- likely only 1 tweeter will get credit, so this may drive down the number of retweets. Some would say this is a good thing, especially for content like quotes, or #follow friday, but we’ll have to see how this shakes out.
In order to benefit from this new search engine capability, focus on providing good strong content (I know I said this already, but it bears repeating), and try to phrase your tweets uniquely. In the beginning, at least while the algorithm is being worked out, I imagine that unique languaging will be initially counted as unique content. Later on, we may see a shift in this as content and context is also considered. (Kind of like latent semantic indexing for tweets.)
It will be interesting to see if adding tweets to the search engines will improve user experience, or will be seen as just that much more noise.
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