Weblog Pinger Extended with MySQL Database

I've added a MySQL database to Weblog-Pinger, my weblog update notification class library for PHP, so that it can track ping attempts and keep from hitting the same server too often.

Some notification services reject pings sent too frequently. When I was the king of pings for six months in 2005, Weblogs.Com rejected pings sent more frequently than once per half-hour. If you try to ping Ping-O-Matic too often today, you get the error message "Pinging too fast. Slow down cowboy. Please ping no more than once every 5 minutes."

The Drudge Retort uses Weblog-Pinger to send a ping to Ping-O-Matic, Technorati and Weblogs.Com whenever a new story hits the front page or site members update their blogs. Until this release, I haven't limited the frequency of pings.

Perhaps as a consequence, I'm having trouble getting Technorati to index the Retort. I ping the site and get back a successful response, but Technorati last accepted a Retort post 155 days ago and the Drudge Retort page on Technorati claims the blog doesn't exist.

It looks like Technorati is intentionally ignoring the pings in the mistaken belief that the Retort is a splog (spam blog). Technorati did some spring cleaning in March to detect and remove more splogs, which are a huge problem in the blogosphere. Technorati's a useful tool to find responses to your weblog posts and let other bloggers know you've linked to them. Being omitted from the index is a revoltin' development.

Weblog-Pinger, which is open source code released under the GPL, won't send a ping more than once per five minutes to any server for any URL.

Programming · Php · Mysql · 2007/09/19 · 2 COMMENTS · Link

Comments

Rogers, maybe you could re-check the version of MySQL you're using. The library page mentions MySQL 4.3.2, but that doesn't (and won't ever) exist. It might confuse those wanting to use your code.

#1 · Peter Breuls · 2007/09/19

Thanks for the correction. It's MySQL 3.23.

#2 · Rogers Cadenhead · 2007/09/19