The Taskbar Scheduler is a very exciting feature in XSitePro, designed to put your web-site building process onto auto-pilot for you.  There are effectively two different ways that this feature can help you keep your Web site looking in great shape with minimal effort.

• Automatically publishing new page content - Working in unison with the page 'Scheduling' option in your advanced Web page settings you can pre-write your page content and have the Taskbar scheduler pick up those new pages, at the appropriate date, and publish them for you - all automatically.
• Automatically publishing a new version (or even versions) of your whole site - Create one or more different versions of your whole site (by simply copying your site, and then adjusting it). Then, using the Taskbar Scheduler tool you can set these different site versions to publish on specific dates, in sequence - again, all automatically.

Why is 'fresh' content important?

The Internet is full of what are often referred to as 'cobwebs' - sites which were published once and then forgotten about, giving little value to the visitor - disliked by search engines.  Remember, two of the key metrics for evaluating the quality of search engine results are whether those sites you see at the top of the results:

• Are "genuine, quality content"
• 100% relevant to your search query

If you think about this for a moment it doesn't take too long to realize that an eight year-old page that hasn't been touched since first being published is unlikely to deliver particularly highly on either of the two counts above. The result? A low-ranking within the search engine results. It would seem that Search Engines assign a higher rank to those sites delivering quality, relevant content on an ongoing basis, over a period of time.

Don't Peak too soon!

Sites with hundreds and hundreds of pages suddenly appearing overnight are almost guaranteed to trip Search Engines' warning systems. There is something a little 'suspicious' (at least, in the Search Engines' view) about a massive site (or huge quantity of pages) appearing in one shot. Search Engines would rather see quality sites being built 'organically' over a period of months and years. This is arguably a more 'natural' trait amongst quality sites (albeit with some exceptions), and this natural approach to building your site content is something you should aim to replicate.

What's so great about the Taskbar Scheduler tool is that it allows you to add a substantial quantity of content to your site in one hit (so you can add articles, news, Private Label Rights (PLR) content, reviews, product pages, download pages, resource pages and more) but then have XSitePro spread this content out over a period of time for you. The best of both worlds! On a purely practical level, this scheduling tool can help you get some additional pages live while you're out of town, on vacation for example. If you have some newsletters or article content appearing on your site while enjoying some down-time, your site's visitors will think it's 'business as normal' - one less thing to worry about while you're lying on the beach...

In the following sections we'll examine how we can use the Taskbar Scheduling tool to update our content on auto-pilot.

Loading the Taskbar Scheduler

The Taskbar scheduler is loaded from the same program folder (in your start-menu) as the XSitePro application itself. If you're running Vista, your screen will look a little more like the one below:

Note: If you're running XP the menu will look a little different.

Clicking the link shown above will load the Taskbar scheduler window shown below:

The Scheduler screen is very straightforward, listing your currently scheduled publishing tasks in the central list (this will of course be blank, the first time you load this module). The list contains the following information:

• Site name - This is the Web site to which this schedule relates. Reading across this row of information you will be able to see when the scheduler last published the site in question.
• Frequency - This value indicates how often the site in question will be published.
• Next Publish Date - Based on your publishing schedule settings, this value is the date the scheduler is next due to publish the site in question.
• Last Published - This date is when the site (to which this schedule entry applies) was last published.
• Files Uploaded - This value shows how many files were actually uploaded when the scheduled publishing task last ran.
• Edit/Delete Links - Clicking the Edit/Delete links for a particular scheduler list entry will open the scheduling properties for the list entry, or delete that list entry, as appropriate.

There are also a couple of buttons on this screen that we need to review:

• Scheduler Preferences Button - Clicking this button will load the taskbar scheduler preference screen, described in detail, later in this topic.
• Create New Schedule Button - Clicking the button, below the task list, will load the New schedule screen, into which we can enter settings for our new publishing task. This screen is explained in the section that follows.

From the main taskbar scheduler screen, once you are finished making changes to, adding and/or deleting your scheduler tasks, you may close the Taskbar Scheduler window at any time by clicking the button at the bottom-right of the window. This will not only save your changes, it will minimize the scheduler into the sys tray, on your windows taskbar (more on which in Sys tray Icon Properties section).

Adding a new taskbar scheduling task

If the taskbar scheduling module is not already loaded, you may load it from your programs folder in your windows start-menu.

In the taskbar scheduler screen, you can launch the new schedule creation process using the 'create new schedule' button:

The new schedule creation window will appear, as shown below:

In this screen you will set all of the different properties that will determine what site is published, and how frequently.

The options available are:

• Site Selection - The drop-down selector at the top of the settings on this screen is where you can select the Web site that this task will publish, at the interval set below. Click the Web site selection drop-down button, and a list of all your Web sites will appear. Simply click on the desired Web site name, in the list, to select it.

Frequency:

The list of options in this section of the screen determine the frequency (in minutes/hours/days/weeks/months) with which your site will be published. Your frequency options include:

• Recurring Time Interval - Select this option to publish the site specified above on a recurring time-interval basis. Clicking the drop-down button will display the options as shown below:
  As you can see from the image above, there are seven settings from which you can choose (just by clicking on the preferred menu item). For example, if I wanted my site to publish automatically every eight hours, I would simply select the time interval '8 Hours' from the drop-down list.
• Recurring Daily - If you would like to publish your site on a daily basis, select this option. Selecting the daily frequency option activates some additional settings to the right of the 'recurring daily' text, on your screen. These options are shown below:
  
  All you need to do at this point, is choose the days upon which you would like the site to be published. Check as many of the days' check-boxes as you want. Checking all seven boxes will of course mean that your site published on every day of the week.
• Recurring Weekly - If you want your site to be published once per week, select this option in the frequency list. Once again, choosing this option activates an additional control - a drop-down box to the right of the option, shown below. This drop-down box contains a list of the days of the week from which you can choose your preferred publishing day:
  
  If, for example, you select 'Tuesday' from the drop-down list, your chosen site will be published once every week, on a Tuesday.
• Recurring Monthly - To set your schedule so that it publishes your selected Web site only once each month, choose this option. On selecting this option you may then use the date selection drop-down button, which lists dates of the month upon which you would like the schedule to run. The drop-down selection list is shown below:
  
  If you select the value '8th' from the list your site would be published on the 8th of every calendar month.
  Note: The list includes values up to the 31st of every month. For those months with less than 31 days, the last day of that month will be substituted automatically for the 31st.
  So, specifically, the publish dates would be as follows in the scenario noted above:
  • January: 31st
  • February: 28th 
  • March: 31st
  • April: 30th
  • May: 31st
  • June: 30th
  • July: 31st
  • August: 31st
  • September: 30th
  • October: 31st 
  • November: 30th
  • December: 31st
• Exact Date - If you would like to publish this Web site on a specific date you may select this option. On choosing this option, the date box, right of the option will be enabled - you can now use the calendar button to the right of the date selector to make your date selection, as shown by the image below:
  
• Timing - Used in conjunction with all of the above 'daily +' frequencies (so with the exception of the 'Recurring Time Interval' frequency above) this setting allows us to stipulate an exact time of day that the site will be published.
  For example, if you have selected the 'Daily' frequency option, then you could specify a time of 12:00pm midday, using this Timing setting. This would mean that every (specified) day, at exactly 12:00pm (by your computer's system clock) the site in question would be published. This timing feature is particularly useful for setting your site publishing tasks to run late at night, when you are not likely to be using your computer (and so your system resources are freely available).
  Note: If you switch off your computer at the end of each working day then you should bear this fact in mind when setting your scheduling timings (the scheduler obviously won't work if the computer is not switched on, and connected to the Internet at the prescribed publishing date/time).
  Tip: Synchronize your automated publishing schedule with the 'update frequency' setting in the Search Engine Site Map module. This will score points with the search engines when their bots re-spider your site and find that you have updated the pages you said you would, with the frequency you promised.

Having selected the site, frequency and time for your publishing task, you can commit these settings to the taskbar scheduler by clicking the [PICTURE button_application_ok.png] button. This will return you to the taskbar scheduler list, with your new task now added. Your new publishing task will now run with the specified frequency.

Taskbar Scheduler Preferences

Clicking the button from within the Taskbar Scheduler module will load a single screen upon which we can adjust settings relating to the scheduler tool itself. This screen is shown below:

In the screen above you will see that there is only one setting that applies to the Taskbar Scheduling tool:

• Load Taskbar Scheduler on Windows Startup - This option determines whether or not the XSitePro Taskbar scheduler will automatically load when Windows starts. If selected, the Taskbar scheduler will be loaded in the background every time windows starts, and the application icon will appear in the bottom right-hand-corner of your windows task-bar (in the sys-tray) next to the clock. For more information on this icon, visit the taskbar scheduler sys tray icon properties section in the Tools manual:
  
  Note: The taskbar scheduler will run independently of the main XSitePro application. This is so that if you select this auto-start option the system overhead is minimized by not loading the full XSitePro application only to publish your site(s) in accordance with the Publishing schedule:
  

To activate this automatic start option, check the check-box (by clicking on it). To de-activate it, uncheck the check-box (again, by clicking on the check-box).

To commit any changes made, click the button to return to the Scheduled publishing tasks list.

Taskbar Scheduler Systray Icon Properties

The Sys tray icon has a special property in that if you right-click on the icon, in the Windows Taskbar sys tray (next to the clock) a small menu will appear with some options.  This menu is shown in the illustration below:

From the menu above, you can select:

• Open - Opens the Taskbar Scheduling module ready for you to make setting adjustments.
• Active - This option (if selected) means the scheduler is currently running, and when the publishing schedule requires, it will go about publishing your sites as you have instructed. By default this setting is selected (i.e the scheduler is active by default).
• Paused - This option, if selected, will pause the scheduler. Even if any of your publishing tasks' times arrive, the sites will not be published while the scheduler is paused. To un-pause the scheduler you simply need to right-click the icon once again, and select the 'Active' menu option, as described above.
• Exit - Clicking this menu option will close the Taskbar Scheduler completely. None of your scheduled tasks will run while the scheduler is closed. To restart the scheduler you may launch it from the programs folder (off your start-menu, on the windows task-bar).

Note: If you specified, in the Taskbar scheduler preferences, that the scheduler should load automatically, every time windows starts, then the scheduler will re-open next time you restart your computer.