I recently stumbled across this post by Matt Cutts of Google which gives an in-depth view of how Google PageRank is affected by rel=”nofollow” links.

I have seen a lot of advice from SEO consultants recommending the use of “nofollow” on links to prevent Google leaking your PageRank out to other web sites and therefore concentrating the passing of PageRank to other pages on your site.

For example, if your page had 10 PageRank points and 10 links to other pages, 5 of which were set to “nofollow”, the other 5 pages would each carry a PageRank of 2 points (ie share the full 10 points between the 5 links).

It would seem from what Matt says that this isn’t exactly how Google works. Sculpting the links on your page to concentrate link traffic to other pages does not equate to a concentrated amount of PageRank being passed to those pages.

In the example above, adding “nofollow” does prevent PageRank being passed through those links but the other 5 links will still only receive 1 PageRank point per link.

In general, Matt suggests whenever you’re linking around within your own site don’t use “nofollow”. Only use “nofollow” on links when you do not want a page to be indexed by Google, or for external links of which you may not have been able to verify the content (for example, a link added by a commenter on your blog).

If that makes no sense, Matt explains it much more clearly…

I love the new widgets API in WordPress 2.8

I followed the excellent tutorial at WPengineer.com which gives a great overview about how to create a widget using the new API. Initially, the widget I created by following the guide seemed to ‘crash’ WordPress when I installed it. After a little investigation I tracked this down to the following…

function widget_myuniquewidget_register() {
   register_sidebar_widget('My Unique Widget','widget_myuniquewidget');
}
add_action('init', widget_myuniquewidget_register);

You must initialise the register_sidebar_widget function by hooking into the ‘init’ action. Failure to do so means the function is called too early which will cause problems. For more information read WordPress Widgets API on the WordPress Codex.

So, this is how Twitter could be useful!

I have to say, I haven’t really got into Twitter yet. My one and only ‘Tweet’ is now over 1 month old which shows my embarrassing failure to get to grips with what Twitter is all about. Yes, I’m one of the 552,828 followers of Stephen Fry (at the time of writing), but up until now I’ve failed so see the usefulness of Twitter in a real-world environment – not just to know when Stephen in going to be “Back in time for tea”.

So, hit London with 48 hours of tube strikes and suddenly it all becomes clear. Follow BBCTravelalert on Twitter and get instant up-to-date feedback on the latest travel situation from London’s commuters – much more useful that the TFL service updates which are rarely accurate.

I’ve made my first contribution to the WP e-Commerce plugin – my first contribution to an open source project…

It’s a great e-commerce plugin for WordPress but there were a few visual things niggling me that I thought should be sorted out – mainly the way that the widget for showing categories was not styled the same way as the WordPress default widgets.

Fixing the issue was just a case of making a couple of tweaks to the HTML; changing some square brackets to normal brackets and removing some bold styling.

Nothing revolutionary there, but it should now look a whole lot better with your default WordPress theme without making any modifications…

The current version in development WP e-Commerce 3.7 is looking great, with an overhaul of the user interface to bring it into line with WordPress 2.7, a complete reorganisation of the code making it easier for us developers, and a new template engine which works along the same lines at the WordPress Loop so that theme authors can now get in on the act without having to delve too far into the plugin’s code.

So I’ve not posted anything for over 6 months…
…why on earth not?

Well, mainly because I have been really busy, but also because I’ve been spending much of my time getting lost in WordPress.

By getting lost I don’t mean disorientated and confused – in fact WordPress is a great little blogging/CMS system for the non-technical user with it’s intuitive user interface and now in version 2.7 the ability to cusomise the admin, hiding panels and options that you don’t use on a regular basis.

I’ve been absorbing myself in the code, examining plugins and themes, and getting to grips with hooks and filters. Under the bonnet, WordPress provides an extensive interface into which developers can create complex plugins and created rich, visual, interactive themes. And one thing is clear…

…a WordPress site does not necessarily have to look or behave like a blog.

Check out some of these themes and sites – they all run WordPress, honest (or at least they did the last time I looked):

• Reform & Revolution
• Seek & Destroy Clothing
• Modularity Theme
• On Demand Theme
• BuddyPress
• Typographica
• John Saddington
• Fotofolio Theme