How to Add a Dynamic Sitemap to Your Site

April 23, 2008 Edit: This mod is for Build A Niche Store (BANS) sites that are v1 or v2 only. BANS v3 includes a dynamic sitemap so there is no need to add this mod to v3+ sites. You can help Google index your site by submitting a sitemap to them. The sitemap below is a dynamic sitemap, which means it automatically updates whenever you add a...

How to Add your Dynamic Sitemap to your site’s robots.txt

You can add your dynamic sitemap’s location to your robots.txt. The reason to do this is so you can tell the search engine/spider where your sitemap.xml file is. This may help index your site quicker. This idea comes from forum member WebMogul. You can see his instructions here. My instructions to add your dynamic sitemap to...

How to Add A Robots.txt to your site

The brief (and by no means complete) definition of a robots.txt is that it is a document that tells search engine spiders what pages in your site to index and which to ignore. Many people choose to prevent their BANS folders and files from being indexed for several reasons. If they do get indexed then these folders and files could be included in...

How to Correct the Size of Auction Images on your Site

The largest width eBay allows for gallery images (the images you see next to most auction results) is 96px. In versions 1x and 2x of BANS image width is 80px (v3x corrects this so you do not need to add this mod to v3 sites). This means many image widths are cutoff, making them look strange and incomplete:Fortunately, there is an easy way to...

How to edit files such as .htaccess and FrontControl.php

Many of my ‘How To…’ instructions tell you to edit files such as .htaccess or FrontControl.php. This is easy enough to do when you know what I’m talking about but if this makes you stare hopelessly at your computer screen don’t dispare. I’ll tell you exactly how to do this. Some files can be edited through your...

The Best FTP I’ve Used

There are many ways to upload files to your hosting server. The hardest way is to use File Manager within your hosting program. Yes, you can use this but it will take a very long time and require you to work quite a bit. The better way to upload files to your host is to use an FTP. FTP = File Transfer Protocol and is a tool that uploads files from...

How to Add ‘Bookmark this Site’ and ‘Refer-a-Friend’ Links to your Site

Want a great (and free) way to get more traffic to your web site? Then give people an easy way to share your sites and also encourage them to bookmark your sites. There are many ‘Refer-a-Friend’ and bookmarking scripts. I’m sharing the ones that I use. I no longer remember where I got these so I am unable to credit their...

How to Add Permalinks (or Link-Backs or Trackbacks) to your Site

BANS member Mark (aka meeymydomains) has given us many excellent mods for our sites. This one, though, seems to be difficult for members to implement. I took an afternoon and wrote up my own instructions for this mod and it has worked for me. Mark’s instructions for this mod are located here. My instructions to add permalinks...

Why I started this site

A few months ago I created the free  BANS Toolbar.  My intention was to simply create a toolbar for Build A Niche Store users.  However, I started posting helpful tidbits and such but I think that wasn’t the place for such information. Instead I created this website where I can share strategies for creating and growing a niche store...