I have gathered a list of XML-RPC Ping Services and decided to post here.

You can set up Wordpress to send pings to these services automatically: Choose Options > Writing > Update Services > Paste the list below there and select update.
That’s all now every time you publish a new blog post all those services will be updated automatically.

http://api.feedster.com/ping
http://api.moreover.com/ping
http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping
http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2
http://ping.amagle.com/
http://ping.bitacoras.com
http://ping.blo.gs/
http://ping.feedburner.com
http://ping.rootblog.com/rpc.php
http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php
http://rcs.datashed.net/RPC2/
http://rpc.blogbuzzmachine.com/RPC2
http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/
http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/
http://rpc.newsgator.com/
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
http://topicexchange.com/RPC2
http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2
http://www.blogoole.com/ping/
http://www.blogoon.net/ping/
http://www.blogsnow.com/ping
http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi
http://www.lasermemory.com/lsrpc/
http://www.newsisfree.com/RPCCloud
http://www.popdex.com/addsite.php
http://www.snipsnap.org/RPC2
http://www.wasalive.com/ping/
http://www.weblogues.com/RPC/
http://www.bitacoles.net/ping.php
http://rpc.wpkeys.com
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
http://rpc.britblog.com
http://pingoat.com/goat/RPC2
http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
http://api.moreover.com/RPC2
http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates
http://ping.fakapster.com/rpc
http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/
http://bblog.com/ping.php
http://rpc.tailrank.com/feedburner/RPC2
http://ping.myblog.jp
http://pinger.blogflux.com/rpc
http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC
http://rpc.pingomatic.com


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13.1 Clearly identify the target of each link. [Priority 2]
Link text should be meaningful enough to make sense when read out of context — either on its own or as part of a sequence of links. Link text should also be terse. For example, in HTML, write “Information about version 4.3″ instead of “click here”. In addition to clear link text, content developers may further clarify the target of a link with an informative link title (e.g., in HTML, the “title” attribute).

This guideline indicates that every external link should be clearly marked. I believe that is important to make websites that are accessible but on the other hand marking all external using classes or title attributes it is time consuming and prone to error. It would be very easy to overlook the odd link, well at least for a forgetful soul like me.

The method used in this tutorial addresses this issue effectively using only CSS.

The following CSS attribute selector selects any link with the href attribute that begins with “http://“, but does not contain the defined domain name (yourdomain.com for this example). It uses two separate attribute selectors so that it will match the URI whether or not uses the www.

a[href^="http://"]:not([href*="yourdomain.com"])::after {

content: "\2197";

}

The CSS code above matches:

<a href="http://www.yourdomain.com">Link with www</a>

and

<a href="http://yourdomain.com">Link without www</a>

Smashing Magazine has explored this technique before, the CSS code above simply places an north east arrow ( ↗) after any outgoing link. To make things a little prettier I have just tweaked it further:

1. To make the icon appearing different for each link state, I have created three variations of the same image in one file:

2. Added a CSS rule to add a background image to the normal state of the external link.

a[href^="http://"]:not([href*="yourdomain.com"]) {

background: url(images/external_link.png) no-repeat 100% 3px;

padding: 0 12px 0 0;

}

3. Added a CSS rule to add a background image to the hover state of the external link.

a:hover[href^="http://"]:not([href*="yourdomain.com"]) {

background: url(images/external_link.png) no-repeat 100% -97px;

padding: 0 12px 0 0;

}

4. Added a CSS rule to add a background image to the visted state of the external link.

a:visited[href^="http://"]:not([href*="yourdomain.com"]) {

background: url(images/external_link.png) no-repeat 100% -197px;

padding: 0 12px 0 0;

}

Note

Internet Explorer doesn’t seem to like this method very much. It is not a big deal though because it simply ignores the rule, not displaying the background image. But to be honest… Who cares! There are so many standard compliant rules that don’t work with IE anyway.

Let me know what you think if you encounter any problems with this method or if you feel that there are better ways to achieve this.

Tino

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A couple of months ago I have noticed through my web analytics stats that someone reached my website when searched for ‘Tino‘ on Google. When I checked the SERPs, this website were ranking for tino at the following positions:

SE Rankings for ‘tino’ on 03 November 2007

• Google.co.uk - 35th
• Google.com - N/A
• Yahoo.com - 153th
• Yahoo.co.uk - N/A

I have then decided to take on a little challenge of my own: to reach Google and Yahoo 1st page and share my experience with you.

Please note: I’m not at all trying to foolish search engines with this experiment, seeing that Tino is my name it makes perfect sense ranking well for that keyword because friends and previous clients may try to find me using that keyword.

Well, as it stands now I have managed to improve my rankings a little bit:

SE Rankings for ‘tino’ on 17 December 2007

• Google.co.uk - 14th
• Google.com - N/A
• Yahoo.com - 58th
• Yahoo.co.uk - 217th

It’s not bad but not first page yet :-). I have achieved this mainly with on page optimisation, some reciprocal linking and other off page optimisation techniques.

Have you got any other suggestions?

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Feed Icons - Home of the standard feed icons

Feedicons 2 - good variety of icons

51 RSS button for your blog

Jackbook has also compiled a great set of buttons

It’s amazing to see how RSS icons have evolved over the last couple of years.

If you liked it here, subscribe now!

Tino Triste

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Must Have SEO Wordpress Plugins

Unfortunately when you’re new to Wordpress, the vast number of plugins can make it impossible to know which ones to start with.

Akismet - This one comes with the default Wordpress installation. Just register for an api key, activate it, and you can forget about spam.

Dagon Design Sitemap Generator - This html sitemap generator is another great ’set and forget’ plugin. You just need to configure a few options and let this script do all the work for you.

Google (XML) Sitemaps Generator - By far the best XML Sitemap plugin that I’ve ever tried. It features multi-language support, calculates the priority for each post and pings the major 3 search engines automatically, and has a nice XSL stylesheet making the XML sitemap readable to humans.

Head META Description - Inserts the meta description tag dynamically based on the page or blog post text.

Search-Hilite - “Highlihts Search-Words, from external Searches over Yahoo,Google, Lycos and Baidu, as well as WordPress internal Searches, on the Search Results-Pages.”

Search Pages - By default wordpress internal search only searches for blog posts, this plugins extends the search functionality to pages too.

SEO Title Tags - Title tags are the most important on-page tags for search engines these days. This plugin lets you control the title tags individually (rather than having the post title by default). There’s also an option to batch edit the title tags for the entire site.

Wordpress Automatic Upgrade - Probably the most useful plugin I have ever seen. Automatically upgrades your wordpress version to the latest files provided by wordpress.org in five simple 5 steps and without having to manually download or update any files. WPAU even remembers all your activated plugins deactivate them and re-activate the compatible ones in the end.

Wordpress DB Backup - Creates backups of your core WordPress tables as well as additional tables of your choice. You can make backups on demand or scheduled ones. I normally set up a scheduled backup to send to my email address. You’ll never have to worry about backing up your database again.

WP-Cache - Great page caching system to make your site much faster. It caches Worpress pages and storing them in a static file for serving future requests directly from the file. WP-Cache speeds up your wordpress installation serving pages much quicker

These plugins go on all the wordpress installs I do, adding extra plugins according to the type of website I’m working on.

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Well worth checking out the Craziest Captchas on the Web

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The resources featured in this post can be applied to any type of blog or website, I strongly recommend it.

http://mashable.com/2007/07/30/make-money-online/

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I think it is quite impressive since Raising Babies is a brand new domain.

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