Using WordPress Can Ban Your Blog From Ping Services

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In my previous post published a few days back, I’ve show you the ultimate ping list used in this blog and how to create your own ping list. Today I’m going to tell you some major flaws in WordPress pinging system. In fact, if you’ve been using WordPress for a long time, then your blog probably has been banned from ping services by now and you don’t even aware of it.

Note: If the blog is set to be visible to normal human visitors but blocked search engines in the privacy settings, then you won’t have any issue as the WordPress engine will not ping the services upon blog posting.

The purpose of ping is to inform ping service providers such as blog directories, search engines and etc to include your new content upon publishing new blog post. It’s a good idea to have pinging system working and it will bring you tons of traffic if using it correctly. By now you should know if your blog is banned from ping services, you’re losing all those valuable traffic.

There are 3 flaws exist in WordPress default pinging system that will make your blog ban from ping services:

#1 Pinging Multiple Time

By default, WordPress pings whenever you publish a new blog post. That’s what we expect it to work and completely fine. But do you know that WordPress also pings whenever you edit and update blog post? For example, if you edit a blog post 10 times then WordPress will ping the services 10 times. No matter how small the change is, WordPress pinging system always send the ping whenever you edit.

While pinging there’s no way to show which post has been updated. The ping command always sends the home page link of the blog to the ping services. This is very dangerous and actually harms your blog and eventually it will get your blog being banned by the ping services due to excessive pinging. I’m totally agree that ping services need to incorporate such function to prevent pinging spam from automated script.

#2 Pinging Scheduled Blog Post

Scheduling is a nice feature in WordPress. It allows you to edit the time stamp of a blog post from which you can schedule the post so that it goes public on any given date and time. But you may not know that the pinging system does not synchronize with the posting system.

If you plan to for a vacation for 10 days and you are scheduling 10 future posts, 1 post per day. So what you will do is creating and editing time stamp of 10 posts 1-by-1. At the end, you will hit the ‘Schedule’ button 10 times. By the time you finish hitting 10th ‘Schedule’ button, WordPress pinging system sends out 30 pings to ping services even though those 10 posts haven’t appeared in your blog.

Note: You’re lucky, the pinging of the scheduled blog post has been fixed since WordPress 2.1 but the problem still exist in editing blog post.

Solution: MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer

MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer plugin sovles all the problem listed above even in latest version of WordPress (version 2.7). After you install the plugin, it will disable WordPress default pinging system and activate new pinging system bundled. The new pinging system includes the following features:

Whenever you add a new post, it will ping and notify all the ping services as set.
Whenever you edit an existing blog post, it won’t send unnecessary ping to ping services.
Whenever you schedule a future post, it will actually send the ping after your post appears to the public.
Log down all actions taken by MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer no matter it is successful or failed.

Step-By-Step Guide To Install And Activate MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer

Download MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer plugin from here.
Extract or unzip the contents of maxblogpress-ping-optimizer.zip to /wp-content/plugins/ folder. You should get a folder called maxblogpress-ping-optimizer.
Upload the folder maxblogpress-ping-optimizer to your FTP folder /wp-content/plugins/.
Go to plugins admin page in your WordPress and activate the plugin MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer.
Go to Options -> MBP Ping Optimizer or Settings -> MBP Ping Optimizer to register your your email so that you can start using.
Go to Options -> MBP Ping Optimizer or Settings -> MBP Ping Optimizer again to enter your ping list and enable pinging. You can enable ‘limit excessive pinging in short time’ if you plan to post multiple article within a few minutes.

MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer Settings

Personally, I am very appreciate with the log module implemented as a value added feature. It’s easier for you to identify which ping service is not working and you can decide whether to take it off from your ping service.

MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer Logs

Here you can download the MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer from WordPress plugins directory.

Conclusion

Stop using default WordPress ping if you don’t want to kill your blog and lose traffic! I really hope WordPress can solve the issue addressed in future release.

{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }

1 gdenarayana February 13, 2009 at 2:51 am: woahh, this is great

i’m searching wordpress pinging list everywhere but couldn’t find better than this

thanks and best wishes

2 Brandon Buttars May 7, 2009 at 1:19 am: This article is exactly what I was looking for. WordPress’ pinging wasn’t working right for me and this article helped me realize that I don’t want it to work for me. Thanks for the information.

3 Steve Patterson May 23, 2009 at 8:54 am: I use this plug-in, This was one if the first few plug-ins I got. I don’t use the ping service that WP has as default. I use my list with MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer. Thanks for this post. Another great blog entry on your blog. Thanks!

4 Reginaldc June 2, 2009 at 2:36 am: I have used maxblogpress. The plugin has spyware, they make you sign up for there newsletter and is very intrusive. I would not recommend it to anyone. I was looking for other plugins like it. Have not found one. Maxblogpress works but if you don’t want the intrusions leave it alone.