{"id":4440,"date":"2003-09-03T09:19:42","date_gmt":"2003-09-03T16:19:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/?p=4440"},"modified":"2003-09-03T09:19:42","modified_gmt":"2003-09-03T16:19:42","slug":"ping_ping_ping","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/09\/03\/ping_ping_ping.html","title":{"rendered":"Ping, ping, ping went my heart"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Last week, <a href=\"http:\/\/denbeste.nu\">Steven Den Beste <\/a>(temporarily) <a href=\"http:\/\/denbeste.nu\/cd_log_entries\/2003\/08\/CityDesk2.0.shtml\">upgraded his CMS <\/a>(blogging) software from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fogcreek.com\/CityDesk\">CityDesk <\/a>v1 to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fogcreek.com\/CityDesk\/2.0\/help\/WhatsNew\/WhatsNewin2.0.html\">v2<\/a>.  One of the features the new upgrade touted was the ability to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fogcreek.com\/CityDesk\/2.0\/help\/Features\/RunningExternalProgramsAf.html\">execute a program <\/a>(or batch file) upon posting a message, which would, in theory, allow for pinging a blog monitoring site such as weblogs.com.<\/p>\n<p>Since I&#8217;d love to know when he posts, I offered to assist.<\/p>\n<p>CityDesk is a client-side CMS, so all the files and everything are handled on the local machine&#8217;s database, then posted on command to a web site &#8212; a different model than the web-hosted sorts of tools such as MT and Blogger and the like.  Obviously SDB likes it, though it has aspect that would drive me nuts &#8212; such as a lack of XMLRPC pinging tool.  The newest version has aspects that drove SDB nuts, too, so he&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/denbeste.nu\/cd_log_entries\/2003\/08\/Intrusivetools.shtml\">rolled back to v1<\/a>, rendering my discussion with him moot.  But I thought I&#8217;d post the results here, anyway.<\/p>\n<p>Now, even without XMLRPC tools built-in, it&#8217;s still possible to manually ping a lot of these sites by going to them and filling out their manual ping form.  Even though SDB only posts once or twice a day, that extra step was not in his specs for how he wanted this to work, which was (to sum up):<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Automatic &#8212; <i>no <\/i>manual actions or interventions needed, no fancy syntax to memorize.\n<li>Can be executed as a command line or batch file (per CityDesk requirements).\n<li>Leaves no &#8220;cruft&#8221; onscreen &#8212; no left-over windows that need to be closed.\n<li>Works in Windows (or DOS command prompt\/.BAT).<\/ul>\n<p>So, going to the <a href=\"http:\/\/newhome.weblogs.com\/pingSiteForm\">weblogs.com manual ping site <\/a>, or the <a href=\"http:\/\/blo.gs\/ping.php\">blo.gs one<\/a>, or the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.blogrolling.com\/ping.phtml\">blogrolling.com one<\/a>, was right out.<\/p>\n<p>Doing a little digging, I found that some folks had worked up a way to manually fill in and execute those forms.  So, for example, you could have a batch file that executed:<\/p>\n<p class=\"block\">&#8220;C:\\Program Files\\Internet Explorer\\iexplore.exe&#8221; http:\/\/newhome.weblogs.com\/pingSiteForm?name=&#8217;<i>sitename<\/i>&#8216;&#038;url=<i>siteurl<\/i><\/p>\n<p>(Or you could just put that address and details into an IE link button.  And, presumably, you could do something similar for the other manual ping sites.)<\/p>\n<p>Ah, but that leaves &#8220;cruft&#8221; in its wake &#8212; IE windows that need to be closed.  Not a huge deal, but not what SDB wanted.<\/p>\n<p>I spent a while digging about.  Folks with knowledge of SOAP and HTTP-POST and XML-RPC, and, for all I know, everyone with a Linux installation or something like that, could probably whip something up, but I was seriously scratching my head.<\/p>\n<p>Then, finally, after googling &#8220;CityDesk weblogs.com,&#8221; I found <a href=\"http:\/\/www.manousek.net\/Software\/weblogs.com.html\">this site<\/a>.  There I found a VBS script that can send an XMLRPC ping to weblogs.com, with the site parameters on the command line.  Sweet.  It would just take a batch file to invoke:<\/p>\n<p class=\"block\">cscript uwdc.vbs &#8220;<i>sitename<\/i>&#8221; &#8220;<i>siteurl<\/i>&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>And, again, presumably it could be modified to ping the other sites that accept such pings.<\/p>\n<p>As I said, it turned out to be moot.  But I thought I&#8217;d document what I found here, in case someone else is in the same boat.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, for most people, my recommendation would be to change to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.movabletype.org\">Movable Type <\/a>&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last week, Steven Den Beste (temporarily) upgraded his CMS (blogging) software from CityDesk v1 to v2. One of the features the new upgrade touted was the ability to execute a&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogging"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1615,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2001\/12\/03\/because_my_life.html","url_meta":{"origin":4440,"position":0},"title":"Because my life is not full of enough projects at the moment","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 3-Dec-01 9:13pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Never mind that, with NaNoWriMo over, my time is only booked about 150%. Fog Software has released CityDesk, which looks to be a PC-based blogging tool (actually, it can be...","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Blogging &amp; Internet&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Blogging &amp; Internet","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1603,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2001\/12\/05\/next_please.html","url_meta":{"origin":4440,"position":1},"title":"Next, please?","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 5-Dec-01 10:01am","format":false,"excerpt":"Downloaded the CityDesk Starter Edition. Pros Simple installation. For folks who want to start using it out-of-the-box, it's ready to rock. A decent amount of customizability. Extensibility with other web...","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Blogging &amp; Internet&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Blogging &amp; Internet","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":804,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2001\/11\/13\/another_precinc.html","url_meta":{"origin":4440,"position":2},"title":"Another precinct heard from","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 13-Nov-01 12:31pm","format":false,"excerpt":"It seems like the number of blogging tools out there keeps multiplying. Which is both cool (beause it increases competition, which keeps improving the species) and worrisome (because it makes...","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Blogging &amp; Internet&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Blogging &amp; Internet","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8549,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2005\/10\/14\/ping_ping_ping.html","url_meta":{"origin":4440,"position":3},"title":"Ping, ping, ping went my heart &#8230;","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 14-Oct-05 11:51am","format":false,"excerpt":"Discovered that MT 3.2 allows for internal trackback pinging -- i.e., if I make a post that points at another post within this same blog, it will issue and record...","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Blogging &amp; Internet&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Blogging &amp; Internet","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4387,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/09\/12\/syncing_feeling.html","url_meta":{"origin":4440,"position":4},"title":"Syncing feeling","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 12-Sep-03 7:02am","format":false,"excerpt":"I use SyncIt on my PC and on Margie's. It's an incredibly cool service that keeps a synchronized copy of your IE Favorites online, where they not only serve as...","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Blogging &amp; Internet&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Blogging &amp; Internet","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9491,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2006\/06\/26\/blogrolling.html","url_meta":{"origin":4440,"position":5},"title":"Blogrolling","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 26-Jun-06 10:43pm","format":false,"excerpt":"The blog ping system I go to -- Ping-o-Matic -- supposedly passes along the ping it receives to (among others) Blogrolling.com (which a lot of folks use to create a...","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Blogging &amp; Internet&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Blogging &amp; Internet","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4440"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4440\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}