How to Ping Your Blog?

Why do you need ping services? There are many answers for that question. First, it may be that you want everybody know about your newly posted article(s). Second, by using ping services your blog/website might be indexing right away from search engines. Thus it may in term increase your web traffic. If you use self-hosted WordPress blog, then you may follow the steps below to implement ping services.

• Log in to your admin and click on Settings/Writing.
• Scroll all the way down, copy and paste the following list into the box under Update Services, and save it.
  http://1470.net/api/ping
  http://api.moreover.com/ping
  http://api.moreover.com/RPC2
  http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2
  http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping
  http://bblog.com/ping.php
  http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC
  http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2
  https://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZFinance.woa/wa/pingPodcast
  http://ping.blo.gs/
  http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/
  http://ping.feedburner.com
  http://ping.myblog.jp
  http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
  http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php
  http://pinger.blogflux.com/rpc/
  http://rpc.blogbuzzmachine.com/RPC2
  http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/
  http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
  http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
  http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
  http://rpc.wpkeys.com
  http://services.newsgator.com/ngws/xmlrpcping.aspx
  http://topicexchange.com/RPC2
  http://www.a2b.cc/setloc/bp.a2b
  http://www.bitacoles.net/ping.php
  http://www.popdex.com/addsite.php
  http://www.wasalive.com/ping/

http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/

• After that WordPress will automatically ping your blog whenever you publish your new post.

For the WordPress.com bloggers, your blog has already built in with ping service Ping-O-Matic as your default ping service. If you want to manually ping your blog using ping services other than those offered in Ping-O-Matic, then you may find pingmyblog.com useful. It allows you to selectively choose your choices of ping services to submit.

The above list of ping services is working as of this post is being written. However, if you find any of them is no longer working, please inform me. I’ll appreciate that.

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A Signature For Your Blog Post?

Have you ever thought about to add a signature to you blog post? Adding a signature to each post of you blog will no doubt bring your personal touch to your readers. It is an identity of representing you online. Moreover it brings an uniqueness to your blog as well. I was inspired by Lorelle VanFossen’s signature on her blog.

For WordPress.com Blog

I think it is fun to have your own signature for your blog just like you sign your signature in each email. It also serves a purpose: that is something uniquely reflects your personality. I like to do things differently because we are all unique in many ways. So if you are like me, then go ahead to create your unique signature using your desired program. Make sure you save your signature and copy and paste it at the bottom of each post. I use My Live Signature program to create mine here. What do you think?

For WordPress Blog (WordPress.org Blog)

If you have a WordPress blog, you can just download LiveSig v0.4 plugin here to your PC (personal computer). LiveSig: WordPress Plug provides step-by-step instructions of how to install it. Basically you just need to unzip LiveSigv0.4 file that you’ve just downloaded, then upload it to the folder public_html/wordpress-content/plugins/ using any FTP. Then login to your WordPress Dashboard, and click on Plugins/LiveSig v0.4 to activate it. Finally click on Settings/LiveSig/LiveSig Options. Make sure you select an appropriate user, enter the corresponding MyLiveSignature code and hit Save button to save it. It is Free to obtain MyLiveSignature code, but you need to register in that site to get it. For a small amount of money, you can get animated signature code there too. Have fun bloggging!

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Adding a Signature To Personalize Your Blog Post

Get a Trackback Service for Your Blog

If you don’t know what a trackback service is, you may find out from this post. A trackback service is a mechanism that allows two blogs to communicate each other. Suppose you find an useful article and it is related to what you like to say, so you decide to write about it and link to this article in your post. If both blogs support a trackback service, then you may see your post’s permalink as well as excerpts showing up on the other blogger’s comment section. See the screenshot below:

This is fun since I am always curious of who links back to my blog. It is one way that I can track what post(s) of mine the other bloggers are interested in. Getting a trackback service can help you boost your blog/website traffic too. So it is important that your blog supports a trackback service.

Some blog softwares supporting automatic pinkback service are WordPress, Movable Type, Typo and Community Server. However, Google Blogger still doesn’t support a trackback service yet. Instead it provides a backlink service from Google Blog Search. You may find out how to get a third party trackback service for your Blogger from this article: Get a Trackback Service for Your New Blogger. Learn How?. As for WordPress.com/WordPress.org blog, go to WordPress Dashboard, click on Settings/Discussions/; make sure you click to tick Allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks.) to enable it. See the screenshot below:

Click to enlarge the picture

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How to Add a Favicon to Your WordPress Blog?

Adding a favicon to your blog/website is one way to express yourself. It tells people a little bit about your blog/website too. Professional blogs/websites will never leave it out. If you don’t know what a favicon is, it is a 16×16 pixels or 32×32 pixels image (icon) that is displaced in your browser’s address bar. Check the screenshot below:

I just added a favicon to my WordPress blog. Now it is your turn to add yours. If you don’t know how, the following steps could be useful:

1. First you need to have your image ready in your PC (personal computer).
2. Second visit FavIcon from Pics and follow its instructions there to create a favicon.ico image file.
3. Third download favicon.ico image file to your PC and unzip the file.
4. Next upload the unzipped favicon.ico image to public_html/wp-content/themes/your-theme-name/. Make sure you change your-theme-name to be your real theme name.
5. Next login to your WordPress Admin Dashboard; click on Design/Theme Editor/Header (header.php).
6. Then insert <link rel=”shortcut icon” href=”<?php bloginfo(‘template_directory’); ?>/favicon.ico” /> in your header.php file; more specifically between <head></head>.
7. Finally save your header.php file.

If you use Internet Explorer as your browser, then holding Ctrl and hit R at the same time to reload your blog/website. If you use Mozilla Firefox as your browser, then holding Ctrl and hit F5 at the same time to refresh your blog/website. You should be able to see a favicon which is next to your URL now. However, some people’s favicon may not be shown immediately.

Update: This is for full version WordPress blog only. If you have a WordPress.com blog, this will not apply to you since you don’t have access to all the files.

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