After posting blog entries I like to log into my Google Webmaster Tools and force a re-download of my site map to cut down on the time it takes to be indexed. Normally this is a manual process, but it is pretty simple to automate. I develop with Ruby on Rails and host on a Linux server but the same strategy could easily be applied to other environments.

Make sure curl is installed on your app server:

sudo apt-get install curl

Edit your model:

class Post < ActiveRecord::Base
	include ActionController::UrlWriter
	ActionController::UrlWriter.default_url_options[:host] = 'caffeinefueled.com'

	after_create :pimp

	private
		def pimp
			google = "curl -G -d sitemap=\"#{ sitemap_url }\" www.google.com/webmasters/tools/ping"
			if RAILS_ENV == 'production'
				`#{ google }`
			else
				logger.debug 'Skipping pimpage because we are not in production!'
				logger.debug "[skipping] #{ google }"
			end
		end
end

Normally you can't use named routes (posts_url, sitemap_url, etc) within your models. I had to include the UrlWriter module and configure the host to get around this. Next I use an Active Record callback to detect the creation of new blog posts. Taking a look at the actual function you can see that I use curl to perform a HTTP get informing Google that I have new content. Generally speaking you should only ping them at most once per hour so you may want to add some logic to prevent flooding them if you post frequently.

This same strategy can be used to promote your content all over the web. You could update your twitter feed or save the content on the various social / bookmarking sites. More on this in future updates.