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 program (or batch file) upon posting a message, which would, in theory, allow for pinging a blog monitoring site such as weblogs.com.

Since I'd love to know when he posts, I offered to assist.

CityDesk is a client-side CMS, so all the files and everything are handled on the local machine's database, then posted on command to a web site -- 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 -- such as a lack of XMLRPC pinging tool. The newest version has aspects that drove SDB nuts, too, so he's rolled back to v1, rendering my discussion with him moot. But I thought I'd post the results here, anyway.

Now, even without XMLRPC tools built-in, it'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):

• Automatic -- no manual actions or interventions needed, no fancy syntax to memorize.
• Can be executed as a command line or batch file (per CityDesk requirements).
• Leaves no "cruft" onscreen -- no left-over windows that need to be closed.
• Works in Windows (or DOS command prompt/.BAT).

So, going to the weblogs.com manual ping site , or the blo.gs one, or the blogrolling.com one, was right out.

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:

"C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe" http://newhome.weblogs.com/pingSiteForm?name='sitename'&url=siteurl

(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.)

Ah, but that leaves "cruft" in its wake -- IE windows that need to be closed. Not a huge deal, but not what SDB wanted.

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.

Then, finally, after googling "CityDesk weblogs.com," I found this site. 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:

cscript uwdc.vbs "sitename" "siteurl"

And, again, presumably it could be modified to ping the other sites that accept such pings.

As I said, it turned out to be moot. But I thought I'd document what I found here, in case someone else is in the same boat.

Of course, for most people, my recommendation would be to change to Movable Type ...

Filed under :: Blogging
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Here's some of the projects I am working on:

1. Implementing trackbacks in blogger. This is done. It requires enetation comments and a template changes that puts the rdf in that shows the trackback ping. See http://www.blinne.org/tb.php.txt

2. Impelementation of an update script. This will look at the file being updated, ping weblogs, blo.gs, and blogrolling and any trackbacks that you might have. This php script would be callable like this: http://www.blinne.org?update All you would need is the right template. My goal is that this could be universally used regardless of what CMS software there is. This is still in the planning stages. When I complete this I will ping this message as a test.

Sorry about the bouncing pings.

Heh. No problem.

The problem is that Blogger's clock is fast. I compare the timestamp of a post against "now" on FRII's servers to determine whether to ping. If the post changes in the five window you get mulriple pings.