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Help: Ping Updates

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There are two ways your SigFeed can be updated; Scheduled Updates and Ping Updates. Scheduled Updates updates your SigFeed every six hours. Scheduled Updates is easier to set-up and configure. Ping Updates can update your SigFeed as soon as you post a new entry on your blog, but it requires a little bit of configuration and/or interaction on your part to make it work. This page describes Ping Updates.

New SigFeeds default to using Scheduled Updates when they are created. If you want to switch your SigFeed to Ping Updates, go to the Your SigFeeds page. Select "Modify Settings" from the Action menu of the relevant SigFeed. In the "Update type" section of the next page, select the "Ping Updates" radio button. Make note of the Ping Update Address on this page if you're going to be configuring your blogging software to automatically ping SigFeeder — more on this below. Then click the "Modify Settings" button at the bottom.

Note that, to avoid abuse, you can only trigger a Ping Update once every ten minutes. If you try to update your SigFeed within ten minutes of its last update, the update will fail.

Once you have a SigFeed configured for Ping Updates, there's two ways to have it update after you've posted a new entry. One is to manually trigger an update on the SigFeeder web site; the other is to set up your blogging software to "ping" SigFeeder's server when you post a new entry to tell it to update your SigFeed.

Manually triggering an update

To manually trigger an update, post the new entry on your blog and make sure it's gone through. Then log on to SigFeeder and check out the "Your SigFeeds" page. The SigFeeds which are configured for Ping Updates will have a new entry in their Action menus; "Update SigFeed Immediately." Select that and click the "Go" button. Bam! Your SigFeed updates.

Configuring your blogging software to ping SigFeeder

If you configure your blogging software to automatically ping SigFeeder when you post an entry, you can have SigFeeder immediately update your SigFeed without having to bother logging in to SigFeeder each time to manually trigger an immediate update as mentioned above. This will involve some one-time configuration on your part.

Basically, we want to configure your software to access a special web address on SigFeeder's server when you make a post. This special Ping Update Address can be found on the "Modify Settings" page of your SigFeed, as mentioned above; if you haven't already made note of that address, do so now. (Copy-and-pasting it into an empty text document in your text editor of choice would be a good idea.) The steps to take from there will vary depending on what blogging software you're using; configuration guides for some common software is listed below. Guides for other software will appear here in the near future. (If you can help write such a guide, or can offer suggestions for simplifying any of the guides below, please let me know!)

WordPress

Thanks to awesome SigFeeder beta tester Laughing Man for these instructions.

  1. Install the Default Trackbacks plugin according to instructions.
  2. In the "trackback.txt" file, paste in your Ping Update Address and save.
  3. Enable the Default Trackbacks plugin in WordPress.
Serendipity
  1. Log into your Serendipity installation.
  2. In the Administration Suite menu, click "Configure Plugins."
  3. Under "Event Plugins" click "Click here to install a new plugin."
  4. On the next page, find the "Announce entries" plugin and click the disk-and-arrow icon next to it to install it.
  5. On the Configuration page, paste your Ping Update Address in the "Custom ping-services" text field, but delete the "http://" part. So, for example, if your address is "http://sigfeeder.com/Ping!&f=1", you want to enter it in the field as "sigfeeder.com/Ping!&f=1". Click the "Save" button at the bottom to save the settings.
  6. Now click on New Entry to create a new entry. Scroll down to the "Advanced Options" section of the page. You'll see a section labeled "Announce entries (via XML-RPC ping) to:". Check the box next to your Ping Update Address. Note that you will have to check this box each time you create a new entry, as (frustratingly) the plugin does not remember this setting. Then continue writing and submitting your new entry as normal.
Movable Type
  1. Log in to your Movable Type installation.
  2. Click the "Weblog Config" button in the menu on the left.
  3. On the next page, click the "Preferences" link in the menu at the top.
  4. Scroll down to the "Publicity / Remote Interfaces / Trackback" section.
  5. In the "Others" field, paste in your Ping Update Address. Save your settings.
  6. Now create and submit a new entry as normal.