Last week I was reading an article by Courtney Tuttle, How Setting your blog to ping could hurt your traffic in which he explains that using the timestamp feature actually pings the services ahead of time, sending all searchengines to your site looking for a post that does not yet exist in blogosphere and once it does, it won´t get the ping you set out to give it in the first place.
I haven´t been using the timestamp feature on this blog, but I had been using it on others, making sure they were updated on a regular bases in order for me to be able to focus on other things meanwhile.
After reading the article, and doing some more research online about this topic, I decided to not ping automatically on the timestamped articles anymore but instead do the pinging manually, yet another thing on my daily to-do list …
After a few days pinging manually I figured somebody must have already become fed up with this wordpress flaw and made some sort of plugin to optimize pinging so I went back online to do some research and I found a plug that should do the job: The Ping Optimizer.
This plugin will not only make sure you are sending out pings once your post comes online but when you edit an existing post, it won’t send an unnecessary ping to ping services.
So, from now on I can go back to working ahead safely, without having to worry about upsetting pinging services or pissing them off by admitting the same post “over and over again” when editing an existing post.
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on Feb 26th, 2008 at 8:21 pm
There is also a service called Autopinger that pings only when you have a new item in your feed. I forget how often it checks. That may be a solution too. I used this for a little while and then went back to letting Wordpress ping.
Stephan Miller’s last blog post..Success, One Mistake at a Time
on Feb 26th, 2008 at 9:44 pm
Thanks for the link Mirjam!
I’ve never tried to use the timestamp feature in order to post in the future, but now that I think about it it is pretty messed up. Will certainly use this plugin.
Too bad you didn’t described in brief what was the problem, ‘cuz I had to go all the way to Courtney’s blog and read the whole thing before I understood…
Cheers,
Alex.
Alex at Net-Entrepreneur.com’s last blog post..Those Little Things That Make You Happy
on Feb 26th, 2008 at 10:21 pm
Thanks for the tip, looks like one worth checking out. Just wondering though, why did you go back to letting wordpress ping?
on Feb 26th, 2008 at 10:24 pm
I only used the timestamp once on this blog, but over the weekend I thought about using it more as a back up system seeing I was sick and could not post at all.
Thanks for you comment Alex
on Feb 26th, 2008 at 10:32 pm
I went back to Wordpress so I can pick and choose who I pinged. In other words, my list of ping sites was longer.
Stephan Miller’s last blog post..Success, One Mistake at a Time
on Feb 26th, 2008 at 11:54 pm
Thanks for answering Stephan
So you manually ping when having used a timestamp and check “no ping” when editing a post already public to avoid being banned from pingservices or do you feel it is not that big of a problem?
on Feb 27th, 2008 at 1:38 am
Nice article there Mirjam, thanks for that plugin link to.
Carl - Thatblogsite.com
Carl - Thatblogsite.com’s last blog post..Preparing to Make Your Post
on Feb 28th, 2008 at 5:26 am
Thanks for the advice!
I never thought that the automatic ping could be a problem
Cayo Medeiros aka. yogodoshi’s last blog post..Morph, o celular da nova geração desenvolvido a partir de nanotecnologia
on Feb 28th, 2008 at 9:02 am
you´re welcome Carl
on Feb 28th, 2008 at 9:03 am
Welcome to my blog Cayo, and thanks for commenting,
Learning new things every day
on Feb 28th, 2008 at 7:38 pm
Was not aware that it pings again and again whenever I update a post.
Thanks for the post and the link, Mirjam. Downloaded & installed.
Marcus Hochstadt’s last blog post..Free Blog vs. Your Own Blog
on Feb 28th, 2008 at 8:04 pm
I had no idea pinging worked like that. I just discovered my (huge) error of accidentally adding a number of pinging services that caused redundancy, and now it turns out I’m committing this error, too.
Lots still left to learn. Thanks for the advice and for the plugin link!
Brian, Accepted To College’s last blog post..Top 10 Most Common SAT Grammar Errors
on Feb 28th, 2008 at 11:18 pm
on Feb 28th, 2008 at 11:20 pm
Glad to have been of help Brian, I only recently found out so I thought I´d pass it on! You are right, there is so much to learn …. I just wonder what my blog will look like in a year!
Thanks for commenting!
on Mar 10th, 2008 at 9:05 pm
Hello… I try this pluggin, Thanks for this excelent post.
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on May 6th, 2008 at 2:20 pm
I didn’t know this. Thanks for the heads up.
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