A site about programming, web design/development, social media, and other oddities.
In response to my previous post on blogs and pinging, here’s a definitive list of ping URIs I have kept in a textpad document over the past few months. Please let me know if you find duplicates, addresses that no longer work, or more that deserve to be on this list. Any new links will be added, with credit given to the person that submitted the URI. I’ll even throw in a link to your website or Twitter account, too!
Now… time for the list…
http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2
http://1470.net/api/ping
http://api.feedster.com/ping
http://api.moreover.com/RPC2
http://api.moreover.com/ping
http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2
http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping
http://bblog.com/ping.php
http://bitacoras.net/ping
http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC
http://blogdb.jp/xmlrpc
http://blogmatcher.com/u.php
After spending a few months doing some reading and searching, I’ve put together a comprehensive list of ping URIs for blogs, specifically WordPress. For those unaware, a ping in the blogosphere is an XML-RPC service that notifies services that a blog has been updated. Mind you, that spammers have already found ways to abuse the system by excessively pinging services to drive traffic to their sites, which may not actually contain updated content, but rather links to products or ads. Such activity is not condoned nor do search engines tolerate excessive spam pinging (your site could get banned from some search engines). On the other hand, effective and legitimate pinging does aid in search rankings and search engine optimization because if search engines are pinged when new content is made readily available, the faster search engines can crawl and index the fresh content.
For a few other articles on pinging and SEO, check out
For those that use WordPress like I do and worry that your site could yield a false positive for ping spam, there’s an awesome plugin out there called MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer which will limit excessive pinging that can occur when a blog post is updated or modified. The plugin only pings services when new content has been published. Users can also limit the minimum pinging duration for added security. The best part of the plugin is that it’s free, but you do have to provide your email address in order to download and use the plugin.
I owe a HUGE thank you to my buddy Sam Chang tonight for pointing out a bug that caused the last list item in my navigation to be out of place. Here’s a screen capture of the problem…
What my site looked like in Chrome and Safari.
Sam addressed the problem to me and said that he had been using Google Chrome for his web browser, so I downloaded it (I’m a FireFox/Mozilla user by habit), and lo and behold, there was trouble in paradise. I immediately downloaded Safari and came up with the same results (reason being that both render pages nearly identical to each other).
After a little patience, caffeine, and willpower, the issue has been fixed!
As a result, I wanted to provide some of you with some tools to check your site across multiple browsers simultaneously so that this issue doesn’t creep up again. The first link is a web based service that I used when I first started working at Planet Label, while the other is a plugin that I’ve used in the past for class and client sites.
I’ve decided to update and fix some parts of the site in order to make the site easier to navigate. I revamped the Categories so they are as follows:
The reason for the changes was to keep things as organized on the site as possible. Also, these are the areas that I write about the most, but if I were to add anything else to the site, expansion would be simple based on the model I am basing my posts off of. This also makes it easier for readers who want to find something faster on the site or that would only like to subscribe to certain categories of content that I write.
Another large change I made was the exclusion of the archives section. I find them pointless, really especially for the nature of this website and how I’ve organized the categories.
Finally, I’ve begun adding some of my work to the site. Check the Portfolio section frequently, as I intend on updating it as much as possible within the coming weeks.
That’s all for now, folks. 
It seems that this has become the Sunday tradition on the blog. As always, I hope you enjoy all of the awesome information and resources provided in these sites.
10 Social Media Monitoring / Analytics tools for Measuring Social Media
Essential Facebook Fan Page Resources
A Complete Guide to VPS Hosting
7 Ways to Use Social Media to Create Buzz-Worthy Events
Boost Your SEO Efforts with Effective Traffic-Getting Strategies
How to Make a Great Print Ready Business Card in Photoshop
6 Tips To Writing Publicity-Friendly Content
7 Situations When Designers Outsource (To Other Designers)
The Young Freelancer’s Manifesto
5 Tools & Services I Recommend to Every Blog Owner
You Don’t Need A Plugin For Everything
Things have been quite busy here this week, which is why I have not gotten around to publishing a lot. Also, I’ve been working on my portfolio and am happy with the progress I’ve made on it. More should be up by the end of the weekend. Also, more posts should be coming up, too. Stay tuned for more updates, my friends!
Today is Sunday, ladies and gentleman. Time for the weekly link roundup! Here they are!
How to Make Your Blog More Social Media Friendly
30+ Excellent Photoshop Web layout Design Tutorials
Vector freebies and premium: floral, wings and t-shirts
Sketch a Cute Dog Face in Illustrator
27 Marvelous Old Circus Posters
62 Fresh & Impressive Photoshop Tuts
Create a Vibrant Colorful Alcohol Product Ad in Photoshop
54 Awesome Background Patterns for Designers
57 Great Websites Where You can Download Free Fonts
47 Customizations for the Thesis Theme
Quick Tip: Cool asymmetric rays in Illustrator
3 Reasons Why Freelance Designers Fail
10 Beautiful Business Card Design Tutorials
jQuery Grid & Data Presentation Plugins
25 Fun and Time Saving PhotoShop Actions Tutorials
5 Video Syndication Tools That Can Boost Search Results
5 Simple yet Effective Fresh Vector Tutorials
3 Tips for Managing Your Online Reputation
How To Create An Abstract Bokeh Business Card
9 Reasons Blogs Are Great For SEO
Popular Social Sharing and Bookmarking Widgets and Buttons for WordPress
5 Ways to Simplify Life and Still Find Happiness
A Brief Guide To Learning Regex
Create a Simple Storefront Icon in Illustrator
5 Ways To Make Your Name Work Better for Personal Branding
5 Ways to Market with Social Bookmarketing
6 Ways Brands are Using Social Media For Real-World Action
How to Create a Captivating, Self-Promotion Kit
19 Tips for Driving Traffic to Your Blog
Six Questions to Ask for Powerful Testimonials
60 Beautiful Clean and Light Web Designs for Inspiration
Carbon Fiber Signup Form With PHP, jQuery and CSS3
63 Pro and Delicious Social Media Icon Sets for Your Website
Chandler – open source personal information manager
Understanding SEO Importance for Your Website Productivity
HOW TO: Clean Up Your Facebook Profile
6 Free Vector Seamless Backgrounds (+ source files)
I’m currently in the process of wrapping three majors at UWSP in Computer Information Systems (CIS), Web and Digital Media Development (WDMD), and Philosophy with emphasis in Religious Studies. Right now, I am a VB.NET programmer at Sentry Insurance, Social Media dude for Planet Label, and computer, social media, and web guy at the Stevens Point Brewery.
I specialize in .NET and the Adobe Flash platform, but also love HTML/CSS, JavaScript/AJAX, PHP, and SQL, to name a few. I have an appreciation for the design side of the web, too, and content management systems such as Joomla or Wordpress.
When I am not developing or designing, you can catch me reading about Comparative Religion, Philosophy, Physics, and the occasional fairy tale or two. I also love going to concerts.
