cbnet Ping Optimizer: A Plugin Every WordPress Blog Needs
World’s Best Online Business Resources has added a new plugin to help keep it off the spam lists. This FREE plugin, authored by Chip Bennett, is called “cbnet Ping Optimizer” and can be found at http://www.chipbennett.net/wordpress/plugins/cbnet-ping-optimizer/ or at its official plugin page in the WordPress repository.
This purpose of this plugin is to allow you to edit pages and posts on your blog without activating ping services. It also allows you to schedule a post without pinging. I didn’t realize that actually happened and I tend to use the schedule feature a lot on my blogs. So, you end up pinging when you schedule and then again when the post is submitted.
Just think of any editing you might do to posts or pages. When I first installed this plugin, I was truly shocked at what all came up in the logs and can see clearly not only how a blog could end up being blacklisted by pinging services for spamming, but also why no WordPress blog should be without a plugin like the cbnet Ping Optimizer. Best of all, the price is right. Be sure and leave a comment for Chip letting him know how great his plugin is and also log in at the WordPress repository and give this plugin a great rating.
To Your Success,
SherryD
http://www.wbobr.com
Hi,
is WP3.0 also pinging every revision of every post/article? Or has the behavior of WP changed since ver 3.0? If yes, then the plugin is not needed any more.
Thanks,
FranKW
Hi Frank, I am currently running 3.0.1 and this is what WordPress has to say in regards to the ping service provided under Settings – Writing.
Update Services are tools you can use to let other people know you’ve updated your blog. WordPress automatically notifies popular Update Services that you’ve updated your blog by sending a XML-RPC ping each time you create or update a post. In turn, Update 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!
It would appear that every revision of every post/article is still being pinged in WP3.0
I just downloaded the cbnet plugin, but I was wondering will the same list of urls on there list be pinged twice when posts are made if I have them all listed on my original WP plugin panel?
Hi Wally, if you are referring to the ping list under Settings – Writing, the answer, if I am seeing this correctly, is no. In fact, you do not need to add those to the list for the CBNet plugin. It will pull those settings in for you and take over the management of the pings from the original Settings – Writing area. It will allow pings for new posts, withhold pings for future-dated posts until they are actually posted, and stop pinging whenever you do an update to a post. It also builds a log of its activities so that you are able to see what it is doing.
I agree with you about concluding the behavior of WordPress 3.0 from that description of the Update Services. The Ping Optimizer plugin is still needed.
btw, the first comment in this post “Link Building” is vaguely a spam comment. I don’t know if it has really passed the Akismet spam filter; if yes it should be reported as spam to the Akismet service. These general comments can be easily identified and should be reported.
Best,
Amer.
Hi Amer, thank you for your comment. I agree it is spammy and it has been removed and reported. Thanks for pointing it out. I catch most of these, but the odd one does manage to slip through.
Another great plugin I use that tends to help in this regard is the Broken Link Checker. I find spam comments generally point to website links that do not stick around long. When those links go down I get notified and the link is removed and of course, it helps keep this site free of broken links.
Yeah, the Broken Link Checker plugin is awesome also out of an SEO perspective, actually.
In case you didn’t know – Google truly hates broken links as it’s a so called dead end for them bots.
Just thought I’d let you know.
It seems that Ping Optimizer is a critical tool, needed to prevent many blogs from being blocked as spammy by valuable ping resources.
It also seems that there is no answer (yet) to the question,
“Can Ping Optimizer be safely installed on WP ver. 3.0.1?”
I’d like to use it, but I’m not willing to blow up my blogs. I don’t understand why testing it is so difficult that no one has done it.
This blog is currently at ver. 3.0.1 for WordPress Charlie, as are all of my blogs at this time. I use cbnet Ping Optimizer on all of them.
I guess I will reinstall it then now on my new blog. I hate to be putting in too many plug-ins. Google feeder I just found out has a ping service as well, I wonder if that could be an alternative to adding another plug-in???
Is it a matter of having automatic pinging to maintain the traffic to your blog but risks attracting more spam that you should use the plugin? Would the traffic be affected negatively if I was not using the plugin before and decide to install it now?
Hi James, pinging is used to notify the search engines of updates to your site. That way they know to come and check out the new content and index it so others can find it.
There are times, however, that you may need to make multiple changes to a post or page that already exists. Without a plugin of this nature, the search engines will be notified (pinged) with every change made. Search engines find this annoying as they have already indexed the post. It is better for them to find the changes when they are indexing new content.
As well, you may wish to add posts that will appear at a later date. With a plugin like this one, the search engines will only be notified (pinged) when that content is actually posted for viewing. With out it, the search engine will be notified at the time the post is added. This also annoys the search engines as they come to index content that is not as of yet available.
So you see, it really has nothing to do with spam on your site. It has more to do with you not spamming the search engines with minor updates and content that is not as of yet available.
The plugin can be added at anytime in the life cycle of a blog. As with any plugin addition, you want to keep an eye open for a while after its addition to ensure it is not conflicting with any other plugins that are installed.
When you create a new post, your blog will ping and notify all the ping services that it has been updated. This encourages search engines and different blog directories/services to index your updated blog properly.And it is really help a lot to problematic marketers.
Thanks for sharing this great post to us.And I hope that it will help many people out there,wish you the best mate.
Thanks for what looks like a great tool.
Can I ask what is the recommended frequency to set the plug-in to?
Hi Julie,
If by frequency you are referring to the number of times a post is pinged, that is handled automatically by the plugin. It will ping once when the content is first posted.
If you are referring to the prevent excessive pinging option, I have set mine at 1 ping in a 15 minute time frame. The I believe is the default and should be ample to prevent over pinging.
I have been trying to cut down on my plugins and was wondering if I really needed this. I think I will keep it!
I just added a plugin called “link juice keeper” that redirects all 404′s to your home page. (if you go to my site and add anything random to the url it goes to my home) Google Webmaster tools showed a ton of them from old tags, categories etc. It seems to be working but I am wondering if there are any negatives I am unaware of.
cheers
I just heard about this plugin and was wondering the same thing – is it still necessary with WP 3? It would seem based on the wording stated above from wordpress that is would be, but I had read another discussion in which the plugin author thought that it might not be needed anymore (he was also trying to find out the definitive answer as well)
@tahoeporter I’m not familiar with that plugin (link juice keeper) nor am I an expert, but I would think it depends on how the redirect is being done. If the plugin does a permanent 301 redirect which tells the search engine that the page has moved to a new location it might actually be harmful since the content on the home page is different than the content on the page that is no longer there. It gets confusing I know.
I was reading a bit about this on the google webmaster forum and they were saying don’t do a 301 redirect if the content isn’t the same on the new page you are redirecting to.
Hi Chris,
In answer to your question, yes, I believe that this plugin is still needed.
@tahoeporter – thank you for your comments. I will take a look at the link juice keeper plugin. I’ve been testing out the NO 404 Errors plugin on another blog and have found it to do what I am after, which is to acknowledge to the visitor that the page is unavailable and use a bit of humor to point them back to the home page. It works for that blog.
Another plugin I would like to mention here is the limit login attempts plugin. This plugin has been has recently been instrumental in protecting WBOBR against a string of hacking attempts and providing the needed information needed to block those attempts from all of my blogs.
Just a short post which won’t add value but I must say thank you for this article.
Having started a blog (very new to this) I have tried to find a clear explanation on what pinging is. So far this has so far and away given me the best insight into how pinging relates to my blog. Am now going to download and install the plugin.
Again thanks