Ogawa::Hacks: Update-n-Ping Plugin

A plugin for sending 'update pings' when updating entries.

update-n-ping.zip

0.01(2005.02.23):

First Release

0.02(2005.02.24):

Bug Fix

0.04(2005.03.06):

Support Perl 5.0

0.10(2005.04.25):

Support Plugin customization feature for MT3.16 or later

0.11(2005.06.10):

Fix for sending Update-pings when updating via XMLRPC or Atom API

0.12(2005.10.24):

Now support MT 3.2.

The default Movable Type 3.1 does send 'update pings' if you post new entries or change entries' state from 'Draft' to 'Publish'. On other hand, MT3 does NOT send any update pings if modify 'published' entries.

This plugin enables MT to send update pings when updating published entries and adding newly published entries.

REQUIREMENTS

This plugin is supported on Movable Type 3.1 or later. If you are using an older version of Movable Type, we strongly suggest upgrading to the latest release.

INSTALLATION FOR MT 3.2+

To install this plugin, upload or copy "update-n-ping.pl" into your "plugins" directory of Movable Type. After proper installation, you will see a new "Update-n-Ping" plugin listed on the Main Menu of your Movable Type.

To uninstall this plugin, just remove "update-n-ping.pl" from your plugins directory.

INSTALLATION FOR MT 3.1

The following files are provided with this distribution:

plugins/update-n-ping/plugin.pl
plugins/update-n-ping/config.cgi
plugins/update-n-ping/tmpl/update-n-ping.tmpl

To install this plugin, upload or copy these files into your Movable Type directory and set the permission of the "config.cgi" script to 0755 (be executable).

After proper installation, you will see a new "Update-n-Ping Plugin" listed on the Main Menu of your Movable Type.

To uninstall this plugin, remove the directories and files added by the installation process.

CUSTOMIZATION

If using MT 3.2 or later

You can customize the plugin feature from the "plugin settings" screen for each blogs.

If using MT 3.16 or later

You can customize the plugin feature from "Update-n-Ping Plugin" listed on the Main Menu of your Movable Type.

If using MT 3.15 or earlier

You can customize the plugin by modifying "plugin.pl" by yourself. For example, this plugin sends a ping only to the Ping-o-Matic! server by default. If you want to change this, just change the following part as you like:

$PING_URL = [
             'http://rpc.pingomatic.com/',
             'http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping'
            ];

NOTE

This plugin sends update pings, when you save entries and their states are 'Publish'. This means there is a restriction on using the plugin:

When you post a NEW entry, both of MT and this plugin send update pings. This means you send an update ping TWICE for one new entry. This is a major flaw of this plugin. But, major ping servers throttle receiving update pings from the same server or the same blog, I think. So, it's not so a big problem... Sorry, I'm not sure...

LICENSE

This code is released under the Artistic License. The terms of the Artistic License are described at http://www.perl.com/language/misc/Artistic.html.

AUTHOR & COPYRIGHT

Comments

FYI, config.cgi doesn't check for the new mt-config.cgi config file format properly. I patched mine up so that line 18 looks like this now:
while (!-f "$MT_DIR/mt-config.cgi" && $MT_DIR =~ m|/|) {

Posted by: Scott Johnson | November 5, 2005 02:15 AM

Sorry, I forgot to update my zip file. Now it turns to be version 0.12 and supports MT 3.2. Please download the plugin file again, from:
http://as-is.net/blog/archives/misc/update-n-ping.zip

Posted by: (o) | November 5, 2005 02:32 AM

Hello,

Just a question... it seems that MT doesn't ping any site when I save a Scheduled post. I'll expect that when the transition from scheduled to published occur, the ping take place.... but as far as i see, thats not the case... any hint? Could your plugin be configured to do that? Thanks.

Posted by: BJr | November 8, 2005 10:37 AM

I often schedule entries to appear at a "Future" date... and then run a "cron" job to update the blog periodically and post those entries at the defined time.

After installing Update-n-Ping, I got the following error from the cron job:

Update-n-Ping Plugin died with: Can't call method "status" on an undefined value at plugins/update-n-ping/plugin.pl line 40.

Is there a fix for this?

Posted by: Mecandes | December 3, 2005 12:11 AM

I think you don't get the abovementioned error message as far as you use MT 3.2 + update-n-ping.

Note: Current version of update-n-ping doesn't leave any log message but send pings when you use scheduled posting.

Posted by: (o) | December 3, 2005 12:20 AM

Ogawa::Hacks

Hirotaka Ogawa's Hacks and Softwares mainly for Movable Type. All articles in this blog are written in English.

Update-n-Ping Plugin