As a follow-up to last week's launch of RSS in My Yahoo! I'd like to describe how amazingly simple it is to configure MovableType to ping Yahoo's RSS database each time you post to your weblog.

But first I should explain why you want to do that... Simply put, if you ping Yahoo, you content makes it into My Yahoo much faster. Otherwise, left to it's own motivations, the crawler will pull your RSS feed every so often (more often if it thinks you post frequently).

Step #1


Main MT Admin Page

First, you must get to the main administration page in MovableType. It probably looks something like the image above. If you've never seen that before, I can't really help you. Once there, click the "WEBLOG CONFIG" button. To help you identify it, I'd done my best to imitate a 6 year old circling it with an electronic crayon.

Step #2


Weblog Configuration Page

Next, you need to click on the "Preferences" link at the top of the weblog config page. Once again, the digital crayon is here to help you find your way.

Step #3


Remote Interfaces

Then, on the Preferences page, scroll down quite a way until you see the "Publicity / Remote Interfaces / TrackBack" section (shown above). Again, follow the crayon. In the text area, type http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2 and save your changes.

That's it.

See Also: Ping Yahoo RSS from WordPress and Moveable Type.

Posted by jzawodn at January 26, 2004 12:35 AM

Reader Comments
# David Sifry said:

Jeremy,

Kudos on all the hard work.

So, will you guys be creating a changes.xml with the received ping info?

Dave

on January 26, 2004 01:23 AM
# Al said:

Why's it called pinging when ping isn't even used?

on January 26, 2004 03:29 AM
# Aquarion said:

Ping comes from the sonar "ping" that radar uses to work out if something is there or not. So this, whilst working in the opposite direction, is still a ping.

on January 26, 2004 04:44 AM
# Stephen said:

Not sure if this is important but:
Ping 'http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2' failed: Ping error: Unable to process

on January 26, 2004 04:54 AM
# Jim McMurry said:

SONAR and RADAR are two totally completely different things. Sonar sends sound waves, that are refracted and reflected along a given path until it is returned to the sender (via reflection). This can give you a pattern of change over time. SONAR is the only (between these two) one that uses the term PING" becuase it actually sounds like a ping when ACTIVE SONAR is pulsed against an object.

RADAR does not use sound as a mechanism to detect objects. Hence, no PING return like in SONAR

Sorry had to clarify that.

Also - in SONAR, the PING is heard by both sides of the equation, the sender and the sendee.

jm

on January 26, 2004 12:42 PM
# Al said:

Now I'm even more confused! So I need SONAR or RADAR to use Yahoo's new RSS service?

on January 26, 2004 02:10 PM
# Michael Heraghty said:

Thanks Jeremy,

I also ping blogrolling.com using the same method. The URL to enter is:

http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/

on January 27, 2004 08:36 AM
# Scott Johnson said:

Thanks for the tip Jeremy. I always like to find new places to ping when I make a new post. It certainly helps bring in that traffic.

on January 27, 2004 10:21 AM
# Dirk said:

> Hence, no PING return like in SONAR

Isn't it also called PING if something appears on radar?

And since you can also use radar actively, you can even ping other objects (and they can realize they are on radar).

on January 28, 2004 11:32 AM
# Al said:

They're called BLIPS on the RADAR screen.

on January 28, 2004 12:14 PM
# Michael Stout said:

Thanks! This has been a big help and I love this feature of Yahoo.

on January 30, 2004 09:13 AM
# cabdiraxiin said:

please send for me the stepes of creating yahoo addres

on October 6, 2004 01:50 AM
# Emily from How to Blog said:

You might want to check out my post "comprehensive list of places to ping to let the world know you've updated your blog" on my blog about how to blog. The url is http://blogging.typepad.com/how_to_blog/2004/08/ping_services_t.html

Thanks for the walkthrough on pinging yahoo :)

on April 21, 2005 02:32 PM
# Ellen Weber said:

Thanks for your help with pings! I'd just spent a week trying to figure this out and you said it so well.

on May 11, 2006 10:01 PM
# Chris Short said:

Getting 403s for the ping URL now.

on July 13, 2006 04:41 AM
# Jeremy Zawodny said:

Everyone is. I pinged the team (no pun intended) and they're working to fix it.

on July 13, 2006 06:39 AM
# Michael Heraghty said:

Any update on this? I'm still getting the 403.

on October 11, 2006 02:24 AM
# Antony Shen said:

according to http://publisher.yahoo.com/rss_guide/submit.php
the new URL is
http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping?u=[YOUR RSS URL]

But it does not work for me.

on November 19, 2006 08:07 PM
# Ian Kennedy said:

Antony,

I just double-checked http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping?u= on both my index.xml feed and Feedburner feed urls and it worked fine. What was the error that you were getting?

Ian Kennedy
ikennedy@yahoo-inc.com
Yahoo Publisher Network

on November 21, 2006 09:29 AM
# Don Cameron said:

I hope someone is still looking at this thread. I get the error: "Refresh failed. Feed not found: http://www.jdvent.com/rss/genRSS_gelsey_abcdefgh.xml"

The feed is definitely there and I can read it using several different readers. On my "My Yahoo" page the feed says no new items in the last three days even though I update it regularly.

I'm pulling my hair out.

- Don

on December 7, 2006 11:42 AM
# Jason Douglas said:

Sorry Don. We've moved the main ping entrypoint to ping.feeds.yahoo.com (instead of api.my). Same path/api as before.

The old entrypoint was supposed to map transparently, but something got messed up. We'll get it fixed asap.

on December 7, 2006 03:33 PM
# Avinash said:

http://ping.feeds.yahoo.com?u= Showing "Sorry, the page you requested was not found."

on December 11, 2006 12:34 AM
# wayne said:

Great find, I'm updating my wordpress pings now.

Thanks

on December 28, 2006 05:37 AM
# Don Cameron said:

Avinash: you have to put the "/rss/ping?u=" at the end of the new URL.

on January 5, 2007 10:55 AM
# tony said:

Hi! jeremy, i want to know the different between pinging and run, has knowing the difference between the HTML and http. so email me more about the use of ping

on May 9, 2009 01:34 AM
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