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WordPress ListMaker - index for your WordPress blog

  1. dukelupus
    Member

    To be brief: I made a small tool that helps to create an index for your blog. I did not know how to notify other WordPress users about it, so I contacted support - and they kindly recommended me to do a post here.

    Alas, the listmaker is not fully automatic, but it is still much better then doing an index manually. Hopefully WordPress guys will add that feature soon, in my opinion it is badly needed.

    Now, the links:

    My blog entry about it

    List maker on my home page (download from there)

    My index page, as a sample of the output.

    Please let me know about any issues with the tool, preferably with the XML included if possible. You can mail me from my home page (click item "Contact" on top) or just leave a comment to the blog post. All ideas are welcome as well, naturally.

  2. timethief
    Member

    Many bloggers have asked how to make an index page and all we could recommend was a cumbersome process. Thanks so much for posting to the forum and sharing this. It's much appreciated. :)

  3. dukelupus
    Member

    I never understood why WordPress doesn't have that feature - perhaps an "out-of-the-box" index page on every blog, /postindex or something like that. I have not looked at WordPress code, but it would be easy and fast to do something like "SELECT title FROM blogposts WHERE blogID=nnnnn and STATUS=published". Creating HTML from the result is a trivial process.

    As for the List Maker - it should be possible to get the blog titles via xml-rpc, if people are interested in the tool then I'll explore the possibilities of that.

  4. zaletabakman
    Member

    I just used it - Thank you.
    http://zaletabakman.ca/site-map/index-of-articles/

    I think it should become a "Standard Page Format"

    Zale
    [email redacted]
    http://www.ZaleTabakman.ca

  5. judyb12
    Member

    windows only? :(

  6. dukelupus
    Member

    Well, theoretically you could get it to run with Mono on Linux, but I wouldn't hold my breath...

  7. dukelupus
    Member

    I just released WordPress ListMaker v2. V2 eliminates the need to manually download the export file - instead it utilizes WordPress XML-RPC interface. It is also much less error-prone and overall much smoother.

    See my blog entry about WordPress ListMaker v2 or get it from my home page.

    As always, all feedback is most welcome.

  8. nylusmilk
    Member

    Sorry if this question has an obvious answer, but I'd like to know what are the benefits of making an index page?

  9. dukelupus
    Member

    Well, other then that it is impossible to find your blog posts after they are gone from "recently posted", none? If you have a lots of posts in a category (trust me, it will happen), then category links are not helpful as well - you can have at best 15 posts on a page.

    WordPress search does not function well - "not at all" would be a better description - and I've actually been forced to look for my own posts using Google search...

    Index page gives quick'n'dirty overview of your posts - useful not only to yourself but for others as well. Easiest way to locate any post quickly, imho.

  10. nylusmilk
    Member

    I see... I didn't realise that the WordPress search widget is not effective.

  11. timethief
    Member

    Actually I have found the wordpress.com search widget to be effective. If I use the post title or any string of words I know to be in a post I can find them quickly. If I have a date such as the month I published the post in then I use the Manage - Status - Date - Filter and find the post I want rapidly that way. Lately though there have been several requests for an index of posts listed by title. So I'm sure they will appreciate the use of the tool you created.

  12. dukelupus
    Member

    Actually - what I would like to be done is someone independent and trustworthy - such as one of WordPress developers or support staff, perhaps - to check the traffic of the WP ListMaker (with Fiddler or any other tool of their choice) and verify that it is not sending blog passwords or any other info whatsoever to me. I know I would be suspicious of such tool, if it comes from "just someone", so...

  13. andreworange
    Member

    Sounds cool but when I tried to Open XML it said:

    Error parsing XML: Reference to undeclared entity 'laquo'. Line 2143, position 45.

    Any ideas? Thanks.

  14. claudecf
    Member

    I got so excited, but then when I downloaded on my macintosh and saw the .exe suffix, I was quite disappointed. Hope some of you geeks does this for every platform!

  15. lorelle
    Member

    Just a note on the "effectiveness" of WordPress search, which happens to be in a Widget but is still the core search for WordPress. It is ineffective for users because it lists search results in chronological order "for each word found" not phrases or listed by most relevant possibilities. A post you wrote 8 months ago might have the "right" answer for the searcher, but they may have to plow through several pages of search results to go back 8 months to find it. Few are willing to do that.

    There is talk of improving the search function, but until then, the site map, as dukelupus has so graciously developed (YAHOOOOO!) creates a table of contents for your blog. I recommend you label it "site map" on a Page so people understand exactly what it is. "Index" is a bit vague, but site map is an old term that people understand.

    I'm so thrilled. Thank you, dukelupus, for this. I'm going to put it to the test on over 2000 and two years of posts right now!

  16. dukelupus
    Member

    andreworange (and any others who have this problem): please try v2 from here. v1 uses WordPress export XML, that has not been validated and often contains XML errors. V2 uses XML-RPC web service - and hopefully that is better formed then their export XML...

    I updated the v1 blog post now, notifying of v2, Will do the same to web page as well.

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