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.
While checking the summary statistics in StatCounter about my website, I discovered that many of my visitors are from foreign countries other than United States. I also have seen many blogs/websites embedded Google translation service with icons of their corresponding country flags. So I think it is very important that you can provide this kind of service for your visitors. Although the translation service provided from Google is not perfect, hopefully Google will improve it further in the future. If you are interested and want to implement the codes on your blog just like mine here. Follow the steps below:
Download the widget codes here. It provides 22 languages with its corresponding flags.
Login to your WordPress Dashboard; click on Design/Widgets.
Click on Add next to text; you should see text widget is added to the right sidebar.
Click on Edit to open up its text area; put the above codes there; give a title if you wish.
A couple weeks ago, I wrote a post, How to Add Google Sitemap to WordPress.com Blog?, which showed you how you can submit your blog’s feed to Google Webmaster Tools account. Now you might wonder how you can get your WordPress.com blog verified by Google too. It seems it is impossible to do that because we don’t have controls of our files; but hope is always there. The article, Get your WordPress.com Blog Google Verified, will guide you the way of how to do that. Still I want to show you the way I got my WordPress.com blog verified here:
If this is the first time you sign in, then type your blog’s/website’s URL (the address for your blog/website) in the text field and click on Add Site.
Under Verified? click on Verify button
A new window is shown; saying Verification Status: NOT VERIFIED.
In the drop-down list; choose Upload a HTML File.
More information will be shown here. Here you have two choices to submit your blog/website:
I’ve created a file named google2ae4cd3d07afcb8a.html.
(google2ae4cd3d07afcb8a.html is given by Google. You’ll get your own)
I’ve uploaded the file to http://yoursitename.wordpress.com/ and can view http://yoursitename.wordpress.com/google2ae4cd3d07afcb8a.html in my browser.
(Make sure you replace yoursitename with your own domain name.)
Since you know we don’t have controls of our files; so we’ll go for the choice 1.
Go to your WordPress.com Dashboard, click on Write/Page to create a new page named http://yoursitename.wordpress.com/google2ae4cd3d07afcb8a.html. This page can be empty. Make sure you change yoursitename to be your own domain name. (Keep it private once Google has verified your blog/website)
Now wait for Google to update your status. Google Webmaster Tools will inform you once your blog/website are being verified. After you’ve succeeded, you will enjoy reports about your pages’ visibility on Google.
YouTube.com is an interesting site where you can broadcast yourself, your friends, or your family in videos. I tried to find out how to post YouTube Video in WordPress.com blog. I came across 4 New Ways to Embed Video which shows details of how to implement YouTube code in your WordPress.com blog. Here is another related article showing you how to post a YouTube Video in you post. If you use new Blogger, find out how to implement it from this article: How Can You Post YouTube Video in New Blogger? If you use WordPress.org blog, here is the way to go: Posting your videos with WordPress. The following is the YouTube video that I figured out how to post on my WordPress.com blog. What do you think?
Is it possible that WordPress.com allows us to edit the default footer in our blog? For example, if you want to add something like copyright, disclaimer, privacy policy, and etc. to the footer. According to customizing footer in WordPress.com Forum, there is no way we can edit our footer without purchasing the Custom CSS Upgrade.
Nevertheless I found WordPress.com Resources – Tips, Tricks and Tools and Lorelle on WordPress are pretty useful sites for new WordPress.com bloggers. I often search in Google and end it up in their sites. If you are a new blogger like me, you are going to love their sites. A lot of informative tips and tricks there. They’ve never disappointed me so far.
The WordPress theme, Cutline, is the most downloaded theme so far. Do you know why? One reason is that it is already optimized for SEO (search engine optimization) purpose. Another reason is that it provides widgets ready functionality. I also like the way that it comes with its own header image. However I would like to replace it with my own unique image. How can you do that? Actually it is pretty easy if you are using WordPress.com software for your blog. All you have to do is to follow the steps below:
Login to your WordPress.com Dashboard
Click on Design/Custom Image Header
A new page will open; click Browse button to find your desired image (you have to have your image ready from your Personal Computer)
Click Upload to upload your desired image to your WordPress.com
It will lead you to a new page, where you can see your uploaded image
Adjust your header to the desired position and click on Crop Header. If you have already made your image’s dimension the same as the default one, then this step will be skipped.
Now a new page tells you that “Header Complete! Visit your site and you should see the new header now.”
That’s all. You have just successfully replaced your theme’s header image to your own and it doesn’t take that long.
In my previous post, How to Add Google Sitemap to WordPress.com Blog?, I talked about how you can submit a Sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools. Yahoo! Site Explorer has similar services too. If you are interested, type your URL (World Wide Web address) in the text field and click on Add My Site button. Then it will lead you to Yahoo! Sign UP page. From there, you have two choices. If you already have a Yahoo! account, then you may just sign in; if you don’t have a Yahoo! account, then you have to sign up one here.
Once you are inside, you can see that your URL has been added. Now you have to submit your blog feed to Yahoo! by clicking on Authenticate button. It will lead you to a new page. You can see your authentication key like y_key_82890f6bb720e757.htmland a string like 038ccdf3a8dff73a. You have two options to authenticate your blog there:
to upload a verification file to your site or
to add a META tag to your home page.
Since you know you can’t add a META tag to your home page if you own a WordPress.com blog. That is because you don’t have privileges to access your home page’s HTML file. Therefore you have to create a new page from Write/PageWordPress.com Dashboard . You can name whatever title you want, but make sure its permalink looks like this: http://yoursitename.wordpress.com/y_key_82890f6bb720e757.html. Make sure you replace yoursitename with your own site name and y_key_82890f6bb720e757.html with your own authenticate key.
Yahoo! Site Explorer also tells you to put your string into the new page you’ve just created. Click Ready to Authenticate button. It will show you a new page saying “Your site is pending authentication”. Check it later to make sure your site’s status is OK. If it is, then congratulations! You just successfully added your feed to Yahoo!. Make sure you check your Yahoo! Site Explorer regularly. It will report back to you if anything goes wrong.
Update: You can keep the new page you’ve created privately once it is authenticated. Keep in mind that you need to authenticate it again if you see failed button showing up on the status of your blog/website.
My theme, Cutline, came with some widgets. I was wondering whether I can add MyBlogLog widget to my WordPress.com blog and I found out I can. Here is the article showing me how to do it: How to Add a MyBlogLog Widget to A WordPress.com Blog. I applied the same method to a social network, Technorati, and it works! Check it out on the right sidebar. Just let you know that WordPress.comdoes not accept third party codes, especially for the commercial sites.
Update: I just found out that WordPress.comdoesn’t accept Google Analytics service. According to FAQ in WordPress.com, Google Analytics code is already used by WordPress.com software to monitor the domains in ways that provide with useful information to benefit the service they offer; and I also can’t not implement FeedBurner’s FeedFlare and Subscribe via Email Form (only a link) on this blog – a WordPress.com blog.
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