Help - what R - blog, robots, FTP, site maps ?

[oswaldx]

1 What does FTP stand for ?

2 What is blog ?

3 What is a site map and do I need one ?

4 Think I've sorted my descriptions, metatags etc. Getting ready to request a ticket to submit to search engines. Should I sort Blog, site maps, robots out before I request submission ?

created robot text as follows - do I upload this via the FTP thing in it's entirety ?

# Robots.txt file created by http://www.webtoolcentral.com
# For domain: http://www.loftandfound.co.uk

# All robots will spider the domain
User-agent: *
Disallow:

presumably the # means to ignore the text which follows ?

So is there any benefit to this, and what's the point of disallowing certain search engines ?

Thanks

[VodaHost]

Re: Help - what R - blog, robots, FTP, site maps ?

There is a search feature on the top of this page that lets you search this
entire forum. You will find all your answers. Also Google is very helpful.

[Watdaflip]

Re: Help - what R - blog, robots, FTP, site maps ?

What does FTP stand for ?
File transfer protcol (Use to upload/download files from another server/computer)

What is blog ?
A blog is basically just a script that someone uses to put their thoughts out there. If you go to a news site like cnn.com im sure you can find someones blog, that might give you an example.

What is a site map and do I need one ?
Site maps are outlines of your website, displaying a link to every page you have. You don't need one, but it helps if you have link to other pages that arn't on a menu. Like if you have to go to page A, to find a link to page B, that goes to page C. It basically helps users navigate the site, but honestly ive only used maybe 5 sitemaps out of all the site ive visited in my life. (thats just me though)

Think I've sorted my descriptions, metatags etc. Getting ready to request a ticket to submit to search engines. Should I sort Blog, site maps, robots out before I request submission ?
It depends on how the search engine ranks your site on a list for specific search terms. On some it might help you to submit it early (You might get some traffic for some searches and get you site higher up on the list), others like google are determined by how many site link to yours.

So is there any benefit to this, and what's the point of disallowing certain search engines ?
The only thing I can think of (I havnt really studied much on search engines, so there is probably a better reason) but having smaller search engines that no one uses going through your site will inhibit the load speed, possible making it slower for your actual visitors to use your site. (Im admin at a forum on a game site, there was 20+ spider/bot on the site)

This shoudln't affect the site that greatly, but I guess every little bit counts. Seeing there are hundred of peoples site hosted on these servers, if every site has 20 spiders on it, that could add up to thousands, which would have an impact on the server load

[oswaldx]

Re: Help - what R - blog, robots, FTP, site maps ?

Many thanks for your help and advice. Less confused than I was.