Up Smart Update Pinger Plugin for WordPress

The name’s a bit of a mouthful but this plugin is way cool. It replacesthe default ping stuff – due to some of the spamming that your default ping module could be doing in WordPress. By default WordPress pings everytime you update your blog – that includes edits etc – which to me could mean that I was pinging (with the same article) four five times in close sucession. The Up Smart Update Pinger only pings when you update.

But this is not the whole story. It also provides the ability to run a diagnostic test when you post that shows you where the error were in your pings. I’ve grabbed a quick screen shot of this from this site.

This is a great move forward for all bloggers. You can install it, activate it, write a post and see if the pings have worked. You can download this little darling of a ping checking plugin.

Where should your blog ping?

1. Pingomatic: In WordPress your blog is set up to ping Pingomatic by default. Pingomatic tell 16 sites (it can tell more if you have a podcast) that your blog has updated. These are:
   • Weblogs.com
   • FeedBurner
   • MyYahoo!
   • BlogRolling
   • We Blog Alot
   • Topic Exchange
   • Blo.gs
   • Syndic8
   • PubSub
   • Blog Street
   • IceRocket
   • Technorati
   • News Gator
   • BlogDigger
   • MoreOver
   • News Is Free

   Of this list Technorati has some nice bits and pieces so get over there and claim your blog. If your blog is not pinging automatically go over to Pingomatic and enter your details will do exactly the same thing as your blog should be.

2. Google: for once Google isnt the core place you should ping but its still hugely important and Google Blog Search can bring good traffic if you know what to target in it. In your Ping list put ‘http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2′. If again you’re not pinging you can request a URL and it’ll deliver the same results. Instructions for forming this page request can be found at http://www.google.com/help/blogsearch/pinging_API.html. Its at the bottom of the page under the heading “Setting up a REST client”. The important thing is that by pinging Google you’ll get GoogleBot to come and spider your site more quickly. North South Media did find an exception to this.
3. That’s it to be honest. The thirs place I think you should check out, if you are interested in getting your pings going and want to ping everywhere on the planet (and for some of you all the links this may generate could be too tempting to pass up) is to use the list over at Boyd Of Ayrshire. Its where I started my delving into pinging and some of the ping locations listed could be right for your niche blog.

If you know of any other websites that people should be pinging – either via the built in XML request built into WordPress or by URL let us know in the comments below.

Speak to your Hosting Company

I know enough about PHP and hosting to get by but I was struggling to come up with explanations for why my blog pings didn’t seen to be showing up. One call and a quick chat and they diagnosed a reason for my blog not pinging. SafeMode was ON and this was killing the out going pings. One call and they had this issue sorted.

Use the FeedBurner Pingshot

One of the nice things about FeedBurner is the Pingshot functionality – if FeedBurner finds that your feed has updated they’ll do some pings for you. This is kinda simple just go over register, add your feed (add Pro Options to the setup). Once your set up click on the Pro options link and change your feed to be for search engines (this gets rid of the 302 redirect problem and changes them to 301′s – you gotta keep your link love going). Select Pingomatic and Google Blog Ping from the list of option in Pingshot and away you go (they now ping for you which is always good).

Test your trackbacks are all working

If you’ve done the above two steps and your still up to your neck in no pings going make sure you can get them working. Make an internal blog post and reference another post using the trackback address in the link. This should show up in your comments section of WordPress. If it doesn’t, and remember and check your Askimet files as your trackback may get listed in here by mistake, you could be up the river and have no paddle.

If after speaking to your host and are using the FeedBurner Pingshot functionality and nothings working I’d suggest going and getting a new hosting company. I use two main hosting companies and each of them has issues – both have the SafeMode issue.

Apparently the outgoing request file was about 2GB – ok so I do have other sites that weren’t pinging properly but they were still updating frequently in Technorati and similar places. Everywhere on the ping list is no doubt about to Blacklist me for being a spamming so and so (always nice).

Why were other blogs pinging and not this one?

The reason why the other blogs were pinging and this one wasn’t was because they were using FeedBurner for their feeds and these were thing using the Pingshot functionality.

So if your blog aint turning up in Technorati, Google blog search etc just rattle your feed into feedburner and let them do the work. Just remember to optimsie your feed for search engines, in your PRO account settings so that your links still pass link juice – as by default they use 302 redirects.