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August 6, 2008
I wanted to get this document started early so I have a place to post the most common questions I am getting from readers.
Q: Can I ask a dumb question?
A: Just like the school teachers used to say… the only dumb questions are those not asked! Ask away, it may just help others at the same time! If you prefer, use the contact form.
Q: I keep seeing this error - can you help?
Warning: file_get_contents(http://www.yourdomain.com/inc-bans-header.php) [function.file-get-contents]: failed to open stream: HTTP request failed! HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found in /home/xxxxx/public_html/websitefolder/shop/themes/BANS-StudioPress/header.php on line 18
A: Of course, let me break this down into an easier to understand format. Keep in mind, I have replaced the domain name and folder with generic names, they will be named after your own site and folder info.
The easiest way to read these errors is backwards! Start from the end of the sentence and work your way forward! In this case:
On line 18 of header.php, there is a file not found, or a 404 error. The filename is: inc-bans-header.php.
The FIRST thing I do when I see an error like this is to copy the 404 url, in this case, http://www.yourdomain.com/inc-bans-header.php, and paste it into a separate browser window to see if it comes up. If it DOES come up, I know the real issue is elsewhere, it in fact WordPress or whatever application I am using STILL returns a 404, then I know to check and see the file is in place on the hosting account. 9 out of 10 times, the file was never uploaded.
Q: When we are integrating WP and BANS themes how do we deal with sitemaps and robots.txt?
A: Using the WordPress sitemap pluginfor Google, your blog and BANS store will have completely separate sitemaps. Submitting 2 xml sitemaps to search engines is fine as long as they don’t contain duplicate data. In most cases, putting them into the robots.txt file is just a helper for spider bots to find them, you can just as easily provide links in your footer of the appropriate site sections.Also - just to provide a bit of clarification on my own method, which may not be for everyone - I am completely blocking all spiders from the BANS pages of the site. I am doing so inside the robots.txt file. This is being done to have a 100% unique content website that drives traffic through the content. If they want to buy stuff, well, there also happens to be a BANS site on the backside.
Q: Do we have to create and submit a sitemap for the wp element in addition to the BANS auto generated one and if so is there any way to combine or link them?
A:See the answer above for the creation process. I actually read about the merging of 2 individual sitemaps recently, I will find the link and post it. I have never done it myself, nor will I on these Blog/BANS sites.
Q: Do we need to create a separate robots.txt file for the WP element?
A:No, you should only have 1 robots.txt file for the entire website. It should always be in the root of your site.
Q: Also, just to help my understanding of what kind of a beast we actually end up with here; Do I add content to and market both elements independently or can it be treated as a single entity?
A:Purely your own decision in regard to the content portion. If you want to have your BANS pages indexed by search engines, you MUST provide some unique content on your store pages, otherwise, they are just duplicate content. You won’t however use the content pages portion of BANS any longer for single article postings, that is done within WordPress.As far as marketing goes, it depends on how your site is built and who you are marketing for. If you want your BANS indexed, then you would market as you have done in the past. Inbound deep linking to your store etc. In addition, you can find many places and ways to market the BANS pages of the site, even if you don’t want search engines to find it!
10 Responses to “Converting WordPress Theme to BANS Template - FAQ”
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Hi Mark, great series. A few questions:
When we are integrating WP and BANS themes how do we deal with sitemaps and robots.txt?
Do we have to create and submit a sitemap for the wp element in addition to the BANS auto generated one and if so is there any way to combine or link them?
Do we need to create a separate robots.txt file for the WP element?
Also, just to help my understanding of what kind of a beast we actually end up with here; Do I add content to and market both elements independently or can it be treated as a single entity?
cheers
Gerry
I’ll second Gerry’s questions here: How would you suggest we handle robots.txt and sitemaps?
@ Josh -
I had already included it in the FAQ above… you submit as many sitemaps to your GWT (Google Webmaster Tools) section as you want indexed.
For the robots.txt file, you can only have 1, and it needs to be in the root of your domain.
Mark
Doh, sorry Mark. But thanks for the info. =)
If I buy a WP theme templete from you can I use it on as many sites as I have? (5 by the way).
Thanks
PS great site!
@ John - Sure can!
No limits…
On the robots.txt file… can we block nested folders?
For example, in the past we used
Disallow: /admin/
If we have moved our bans off the root, it might be:
Disallow: /shop/admin/
Will this disallow just the /admin/ files or will this also inadvertently disallow all the files in /shop/ as well?
I *assume* it would work just fine. But I did a google search on this and couldn’t find a definitive answer (that I understood as definitive, anyway). Anyone know for sure?
@ Josh -
Great question that I dont know the answer to!! I think blocking the /shop/admin/ would also block the /shop/ as part of the process.
The easiest way to block admin is by entering a meta-tag into your admin-header file though. Thats what I have always done… (even though the admin files are never spidered anyhow)
Just put:
META NAME=”ROBOTS” CONTENT=”NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW”
Between your
and < /head> tags(Add a < bracket to each end. < in front > at end)
Mark
HI Mark, I’ve been reading through your series on integrating a WP theme, and am pleased with my results…but the CSS needs a little tweaking. Now I admit that 1) I havn’t really looked at teh CSS files and 2) sometimes I’m lazy. But your elegance with the integration solutions amazes me so much that there’s got to be an elegant way to sort out CSS issues. I see that one of the posts you have not yet written, but is listed in the index is about the CSS files…when will we have the pleasure of reading your insights?
thanks!