Here’s the step-by-step process for installing the plugin.

Installing the cbnet Ping Optimizer

Log in to WordPress as admin and go to Plugins > Add New.

In the Search box, enter “cbnet ping” and hit “Search Plugins”:

A list of search results of plugins is shown. Select Install for the cbNet Ping Optimizer:

A description window comes up for the cbnet Ping Optimizer. Click on the orange Install link:

WordPress installs the plugin, and informs you that it’s installed. Once the plugin is installed, you have to activate it. Click on the Activate Plugin link to activate it.

WordPress tells you the plugin is activated:

In the list of plugins, there’s a link for the cbnet Plugin Optimizer settings:

However, due to a small typo in version 2.3.2 of the plugin, the settings link from the plugin list doesn’t work. Instead, you should go to WordPress Settings > cbnet Ping Optimizer.

Resources

cbnet Ping Optimizer

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But it also does that every time you update the post, which for me is often five times in 10 minutes after publishing.

If you ping them too many times, they can ban you for spammy behavior.

So, how do you avoid getting banned?

What is a ping?

The word ping was originally used as the name of the Unix utility ping, which tries to contact another computer on the network to see if it’s visible to your computer.

In the blogging world, ping is used to mean your blog contacting a blog indexing service to tell it when you’ve published a post.

WordPress blog pings

By default, WordPress pings rpc.pingomatic.com when you publish a post.

The settings for this are in Settings > Writing > Update Services.

However, and this is key, it also pings when you update the post.

While this is OK if you’ve come back to the post a month or even a week later and added some material that you want indexed, it’s not so good if you’re just changing some minor errors.

What I normally do is proofread a post before publishing it. But no matter how much you proofread, there’s always something you miss. Sometimes I’ve updated a post up to five times after publishing for minor stuff like:

• Adding a picture
• Changing the alignment of a picture
• Bolding a word
• Adding a link
• Adding a tag

All of this in the space of 10 minutes or so. In that time, the web indexing spider for the blog index may or may not have even come around to visit your site, and you’ve already sent them multiple pings.

Overpinging

It’s like ringing someone’s doorbell over and over again when they’ve already heard you and haven’t reached the door yet. You’re likely to annoy them, and they might just not open the door whereas they would have if you didn’t keep ringing.

As for the blog indexes, they don’t really like over-pinging. Think about it if you were the blog service. You already receive millions of pings per day for legitimate posts. Would you really want to receive twice or 3X or 4X that number for no reason?

That’s why it’s believed that some of these services actually ban you if you ping too often.

cbnet Ping Optimizer WordPress Plugin

Since bare WordPress pings too often, you have to use a plugin to make it work like you want. The best overall plugin I’ve found for that is the cbnet Ping Optimizer.

It’s a fork of the MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer, with the difference being that you don’t have to sign up for their e-mail newsletter to get the plugin.

After installing the plugin, go to the settings in Settings > cbnet Ping Optimizer.

Note: Don’t click on the “settings” link in the Installed Plugin list. That doesn’t work in version 2.3.2 of the plugin.

I checked the “Limit excessive pinging in short time” option and set the time to 15 minutes and click Save Settings:

You can set the blog index services to be pinged either in cbnet Ping’s settings or in WordPress’s own settings at Settings > Writing. On the backend, it’s the same setting shared between the two of them.

Ping log

Another advantage of cbnet Ping Optimizer besides avoiding excessive pinging is the ping log. It tells you when WordPress pinged a blog index, and when it didn’t (i.e., you updated a post in quick succession, but the blog index wasn’t sent a ping due to the settings):

Other WordPress Ping Plugins

There are some other ping plugins for WordPress, but they’re not as fit for the purpose or accessible as cbnet Ping Optimizer.

Smart Update Pinger v2.00

This plugin by Christian Davn is discontinued according to various blog posts.

I can’t find an original source for it, and it’s basically abandoned at this point.

MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer

This is a ping plugin that works with the latest WordPress’s, but you have to register your e-mail to get the plugin. The plugin itself is free and open source under GNU GPL.

Ultimate Plugins Smart Update Pinger

This is also a ping plugin that works with the latest WordPress versions, but you have to register your e-mail to get the plugin.

There’s a Ping Watcher and Ping List Checker plugin too, but they don’t do what the other ping plugins do.

Resources

cbnet Ping Optimizer

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Everyday, there can be dozens of absolutely inane comments like these:

Spam Comment

Some, however, are a little trickier:

Disguised Spam

They’re worded generically enough to seem legitimate, but they either link to a spam site, or they’re an attempt to get your WordPress installation to e-mail them. WordPress will notify commenters when new comments are posted. So, in other words, they get the e-mail address which you use to get notifications from WordPress. Regardless of whether you actually monitor that address, spammers can also use a brute-force method of trying hundreds or even thousands of different usernames at a given domain, some of which are likely to match.

Spam comments look bad on your blog when real readers are reading them. Finally, Google doesn’t like links to spam sites. It’ll mark you down for it, and can have an adverse effect on your rankings on search engine result pages (SERPs).

Automatically stopping spam with Akismet

This is where Akismet comes in. Akismet is a WordPress plugin brought to you by the same people that make WordPress and run wordpress.com .

It tests the links in the comments you receive from its servers, and determines, to a high degree of confidence, whether the comments are spam. The exact criteria for Akismet marking a comment as spam aren’t publicly revealed, so as to prevent spammers from gaming the system.

Installing Akismet

Akismet is installed like any other WordPress plugin. Log in as admin, then go to Plugins, and click “Add New”.

Installed Plugins

In the Search box, type “Akismet” and hit Search.

Search for Plugins

Click on “Install” for Akismet in the search results:

Plugin Search Results

Then click on “Install Now”:

Plugin: Install Now

Once Akismet is installed, click on the link to activate it:

Akismet Plugin: Click to Activate

The plugin is activated:

Akismet Plugin: Activated

To enable Akismet, though you have to have what’s called an API key. Since running the Akismet service takes money, service is apportioned among free users. To do this, everyone gets a kind of password called an API key.

Getting an API Key for Akismet

To get an API key, you sign up for an account on wordpress.com:

WordPress.com Signup

Simply enter your desired username and e-mail address.

WordPress.com sends you a confirmation e-mail, and after confirming, you’re sent another e-mail that contains your API key.

If at any later time, you need to find out your API key, just log in to WordPress.com, and go to My Account: Profile:

WordPress.com: Edit Profile

The API key is the first item on the profile screen:

WordPress.com: API Key

Copy it and paste it into your WordPress installation’s Akismet configuration screen:

Akismet Plugin: Configuration Screen

Click on “Update options” and WordPress will verify the API key. After it’s verified, Akismet is operational:

Akismet Plugin: API Key Verified

Using Akismet

There’s nothing else that you have to do to run Akismet.

Akismet checks your comments, and puts the ones it thinks are spam into the WordPress spam bin. You should check it occasionally to ensure that a legitimate comment didn’t get marked spam. To go the the spam holding area, just click the “Spam” link that appears in the Dashboard when you first log in to WordPress:

Akismet Plugin:Spam Bin Link

You can unspam a comment by clicking the “Not Spam” link:

Akismet Plugin:Spam Bin: Not Spam

Allowing instant comments

Another thing you can do after installing Akismet is to allow instant comments. Normally, to screen for spam, most bloggers require that comments be approved before they will display on the blog. This often means delays in getting comments to appear, which leads to a less vibrant discussion.

Since one of the main reasons for comment approval is to avoid spam, with Akismet installed, you can stop requiring admin approval for comments. Go to Settings:

WordPress Settings

Click on Discussion. Then, in the “Before a comment appears” section, uncheck both checkboxes:

WordPress Settings: Discussion Comment Approval

Summary

1. Install Akismet
2. Get and set a WordPress API key
3. Check the spam bin from time to time

Resources

Akismet Plugin Page

WordPress.com

How to Get a Wordpress API Key to Activate Akismet Plugin

Configuring and Using Akismet

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That would be plugins which are recognized as the standard plugins for some of the most-requested functionality in WordPress.

• community-developed (by more than one person)
• GPL
• verified and secure
• tested against new versions of WordPress
• live on the WordPress repository

I particularly like the fact that canonical plugins would be tested against new versions of WordPress. It would be nice to not have to worry about your most important plugins not working after a WordPress upgrade.

Since canonical is word that few normal people use, there blog is running a poll for the best alternative name:

• Standard
• Core
• Premium
• Validated
• Official
• Canonical

Also commenting on canonical plugins are Blogging Pro and wplover .

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By the way, this applies not only to code, but also anything that you might want to display to the user as-is, without line breaks, maybe even a poem.

Why a Code Syntax Plugin

Anyway, if you enter program code in the normal WordPress visual editor, you’ll lose the indentation:

public static void main(String[] args) throws ClientProtocolException, IOException {

URL url = new URL(“https://ssl.site”);
Socket s = new Socket(“proxy.address”, 8080);

Also, lines will usually wrap, which, depending on the programming language, may or may not change the meaning of the code, but might also hinder the reader’s understanding of it.

As well, since the text will be in a proportional font instead of monospace, which is usually used to line up text columns with code.

Code Syntax Plugins for WordPress

Code Snippet

The top Google result for “wordpress code plugin” is Code Snippet. It’s based on the excellent and flexible GeSHi syntax highlighting engine. Unfortunately, the last time it was updated was 2007, and the total all-time downloads (about 3000) are equal to the weekly downloads for wp-syntax, discussed below.

Google Code Highlighter

The Google Syntax Highlighter for WordPress also highlights code. It uses the Google Syntax Highlighter. Disadvantages of this plugin as I see it include:

• JavaScript is required. The code isn’t highlighted as-is, rather it’s highlighted when it reaches the user’s browser. I’m not quite sure how this is to work in FeedBurner and other readers.
• Much fewer languages are supported than GeSHi. While the supported languages are the most common ones in use today, it hardly seems worthwhile to limit your blogging to just these specific languages.

Google Syntax Highlighter WordPress Plugin: Sample 1

wp-syntax

wp-syntax is the best overall plugin for displaying code in WordPress:

wp-syntax WordPress Plugin: PHP Sample 1

• It’s based on GeSHi, which supports over a hundred programming languages.
• All the highlighting happens on the server, and the syntax coloring is embedded in the HTML instead of being in a separate stylesheet file. What that means is that users reading your webfeed in something like FeedBurner will see highlighted code.
• The high number of downloads reduce the possibility that you’ll have standardized on a plugin that will be abandoned.
• The code display is very sleek, unlike a lot of other highlighting plugins. For example, the Google Highlighter has “view plain”, “copy to clipboard”, “print”, and “?” menu items. This is partly necessitated by the fact that many code plugins have so much cruft that a normal select-and-copy operation doesn’t result in copying usably indented code to the clipboard. I’m put off by the fact that a code display needs a user interface! wp-syntax just works; you select the code, copy, and  paste.
• You can choose whether to display line numbers or not, adding to the unburdened display.

Using wp-syntax

Just put your code in a <pre> block. You can do that by selecting the “Preformatted” option in the text Format selector. If that’s not visible, you may need to press the “Show/Hide Kitchen Sink” button, which is the rightmost button on the top row in the Visual Editor.

After you’re done adding your all your code blocks, switch to the HTML Editor, and add a lang=”java” (or whatever language you’re using) to the <pre> blocks.  You can also add a line=”1″ to start line number at whatever number you want. (But beware, this’ll be stripped away after switching back to the Visual Editor.)

<pre lang="java">

That's it for basic usage.

Note: be sure to watch for more posts, which will go into more detail about installing and using the wp-syntax plugin.

Get wp-syntax here.

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I didn’t really want that. Among other reasons, feed readers could display old posts as having updates, when in fact there’s nothing really new for the blog audience. It’s sort of annoying for blog readers, so I googled for a solution.

What seems to be the standard solution is the WordPress Minor Edit Plugin, which adds a little checkbox, “Minor Edit”, to the Publish box in a WordPress Edit Post screen. Check it to avoid a change in last-updated:

WordPress Minor Edit Plugin: Edit Post

Installing the Minor Edit Plugin

Here’s a step-by-step walkthrough to install the plugin.

Log in as your blog’s admin user and go to Plugins: Find Plugins. (This is assuming you’re using WordPress version 2.7 or higher).

Search for “minor edit”:

WordPress Minor Edit Plugin: Select for Installation

Click on “Install” (at the right-hand side of the page), or just click on the description.

WordPress shows an install popup:

WordPress Minor Edit Plugin: Install Popup

Click on the orange “Install” button.

WordPress installs the plugin:

WordPress Minor Edit Plugin: Installing

Be sure to click on Activate to activate the plugin. Otherwise, it’ll be available, but not functional. If you forget, just go to Plugins: Manage Plugins. Go to the bottom where it lists “Inactive Plugins”. Click on Activate for the Minor Edit Plugin:

WordPress Minor Edit Plugin: Activate

The plugin is then activated:

WordPress Minor Edit Plugin: Activated

There are no options to set for this plugin, so the only place you’ll see it in action is the Edit Post page (above).

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