Stylehack

Did you realize that anytime you edit a post after publication WordPress pings any services you have listed in your ping settings… again?! If you’re like me, you make the odd change here and there. Or worse, you find yourself in the position I was just in where I have had to go back and edit some of my older posts after finally upgrading my blog and discovering how much I detested the Autop filter.

I was madly pinging the blogosphere every time I saved during an edit. “Hello World from Stylehack… again! Here are ancient posts I just know you want to read!” [Yeah yeah, they're old but still have some valid content so I didn't want to just delete them.]

Okay, enough said — the scenario for disaster is set (a.k.a. spamming ping services).

Fortunately, I found a great solution, the UP Smart Update Pinger plugin!

Here are the highlights:

1. Works for all wp 2.0+ releases *
2. For future posts, services are only pinged when the post has appeared on your blog
3. Reverse (newest entries first) logging
4. More detailed ping & error logging
5. Auto-selects whether to do an extended or normal ping depending on server capability
6. For extended pings, it uses the new URL instead of just the homepage URL to ping (resulting in a much higher quality ping)

* I conducted a comprehensive test of the functionality of this plugin in WP 2.5.1 and it works just fine.

A few caveats:

• You do have to provide your email address to get access to the plugin, but that shouldn’t be an issue;
• At this point there is no auto-notification via the Dashboard nor email from the developer when an update is available, so you’ll want to check every now and then;
• The installation notes refer to the “Options” tab as the place you go to configure the plugin; in WP 2.5.1 it’s via the “Settings” panel (it will be added to the end of the links on that panel);
• I wrote to the developer with some questions and got a prompt, complete response which was also very friendly!

Ok. that last one is not a caveat, it’s actually a boon! “-)

So stop spamming the blogosphere! Run, don’t walk, and download this plugin now!