Posts Tagged ‘updates’

Wordpress’s Pings can Hurt your Blog & the Plugin that Saves the Day

// November 16th, 2008 // No Comments » // Blogging, Headline, I recommend, SEO, Tutorial, Useful, Wordpress, Wordpress Plugins, web tools, webmaster


If Pinging to you is just one of those geek terms that you’ve come across but just brushed it off as more techno-speak. Then it’s important that you read this post..

Pinging is why blogs are more powerful than ordinary websites and why blogs are easily indexed in search engines while websites struggle to get indexed, Pinging is also why blogs attract more traffic than ordinary websites..this is all because Blogs have the ability to PING! and you can’t afford to overlook the ping process, no matter how geeky it sounds.

Ok, so What is Pinging and what does it do for my blog?

In geek speak:“In blogging, ping is an XML-RPC-based push mechanism by which a weblog notifies a server that its content has been updated. An XML-RPC signal is sent to one or more “ping servers,” which can then generate a list of blogs that have new material. Many blog authoring tools automatically ping one or more servers each time the blogger creates a new post or updates an old one.” – according to the Wikipedia article: ‘Ping (blogging)‘.

Pinging – not to be confused with Pingback or trackback

Similarly, aggregators also use results from ping servers to tell subscribers which items on their subscription lists have fresh material.

In less-geek speak: One word: traffic. WordPress automatically notifies popular ping services that you’ve updated your blog by sending a XML-RPC ping each time you create or update a post. In turn, Ping Services process the ping and updates their proprietary indices with your update. Now people browsing sites like Technorati or Sphere can find your most recent posts! (Wordpress Codex)

Pinging is Super Fantastic but if your using Wordpress beware there are some major flaws in the way that Wordpress (by default) handles pinging that can get your blog banned from pinging services without you even knowing it…and causing you to loose traffic.

Write a post, PING, Great! Edit the post, PING, edit it again.. PING!! PING!! Not so great.

Multiple pinging can get you banned and if you’ve had your WordPress blog for some time then it’s highly possible that you’ve already been banned.

Do not fret my fearless warriors.. there is a WordPress plugin that fixes this problem ..

The Solution: MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer Plugin!

With this plugin you can list all the ping services you want to ping like usual but you can also see which posts have been pinged and when, limit the amount of times your site is pinged, when you edit an existing post, it won’t send an unnecessary ping to ping services and saves your blog from getting banned.

If you think you’ve already covered this issue..just so you know..these older plugins don’t work anymore:

  • Smart Update Pinger
  • Ping Fix
  • WP Cron Future Ping

If your not sure which Ping sites to list in your Wordpress read this post…

Carry on my good soldier!

Cool Links:

Helpful Links:

Aggregators:

Ping Services

Ping Clients

Open Ping Servers

Blog Search Engines:

Multi-Pinging services


Remember to Digg this post so more people can fix this issue.. :X




FlockStar!

// August 17th, 2008 // Comments Off // Applications, Browsers, For Geeks, Freeware, Geeks, I recommend, Ibdreamy, Social Network, Update, Useful, web tools


Flock is so bad ass..It seems I find a new feature on Flock everyday that makes me go “WOW that’s cool”.

_ For example I took this screen shot with Flocks built in screenshot tool that allows you to select clips and snap away.

_ It has a built in Blog editor so I can post to my blog using my browser

_A drag and drop web clipboard manager

_Media bar that streams media from sites like Flickr, Digg, Youtube, your Facebook friends

_A sidebar with all your updated feeds and social networking sites

_side bar listing all your accounts and services that you can click on an automatically be logged into

So if you haven’t tried it yet..dammit try it! I still use Firefox and I probably always will but I love me some Flock now and then.. it’s like my secret little drug…well maybe not that dramatic no..but it’s damn good? I love their My world page it shows me all my updates from my social networking sites. It’s nifty. (see screenshot)