Recently Updated F.A.Q.

1. How do I "ping" BlogRolling to let it know my website has updated?

2. 2. How does BlogRolling know if a weblog has updated?

3. My friends blogs aren't showing up as updated but I see them on weblogs.com or blo.gs.

4. I just added a new link that's on weblogs.com or blo.gs but it's not showing up as recent.

5. My friend is on LiveJournal and their blog never shows up as updated.

1. How do I "ping" BlogRolling to let it know my website has updated?

BlogRolling has a ping service that uses XML-RPC or a web-based form to check to see if your website has updated. The BlogRolling pinger uses the exact same send and response format as weblogs.com. Read the documentation for the weblogs.com spec for more information on the format. All you do is change the host to rpc.blogrolling.com and path to /pinger/. If you use Movable Type as your blog package adding the call to BlogRolling is very simple. In your "weblog config" under "Publicity / Remote Interfaces / TrackBack" add in http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/ in the text box and save your settings. Alternately you can use the BlogRolling Ping Web-form. Most blog software packages like Movable Type, Blogger Pro, Radio and pMachine have built-in options for pinging notification services to tell the site your blog has updated. If you are using a service that doesn't support remote pinging of BlogRolling or you would like to do it yourself you can use the BlogRolling Ping Web-form.

2. How does BlogRolling know if a weblog has updated?

BlogRolling has 2 avenues to tell if a site has updated. The first is using the BlogRolling ping service to flag your website as updated. Please see How do I "ping" BlogRolling to let it know my website has updated in this document for information. The second grabs the recently updated XML feeds from Weblogs.com and Blogger every 5 minutes and applies the updates to the BlogRolling system. If you use any of these services your site will show up as updated in your friends BlogRolls.

3. My friends blogs aren't showing up as updated but I see them on the Recently Updated List.

What more than likely is happening is the URL that is in the BlogRolling database is slightly different from the URL that the blog owner is pinging with. The next time you see the entry on the Recently Updated List copy the URL, open the link in the BlogRolling system for editing and paste in the exact link as it appears. BlogRolling does a lot of post processing of the links it gets in to try and match it to what you have BlogRolled but not all contingencies can be compensated for. NOTE: The most common problem is people blogrolling a site and adding the site's root document to the URL. For example, if I add the link http://blogrolling.com/index.phtml to my blogroll and the URL being pinged is http://blogrolling.com/ the system will NOT set your link to recent even though they go to the same page. Be sure if you are adding a link to your blogroll to remove default homepages such as index.htm, index.html, default.htm, index.php, index.asp etc.

4. I just added a new link that's on the Recently Updated List but it's not showing up as recent.

BlogRolling updates links when the pings come in so any links added after a recently updated ping won't show up as updated until the website updates and pings again.

5. My friend is on LiveJournal and their blog never shows up as updated.

LiveJournal does not support update pinging so their blogs will not show up as updated.