Borneosoft Blog

1. Introduction

This user guide describes how to use the Borneosoft Blog or BorneoBlog for short. You'll learn how to create, edit and post weblog entries. We will also cover more advanced topics such as adjusting your weblog's settings, how to customize your blog, how to manage weblog pings and more.

First, let's get some terminology out of the way because there's a lot of jargon in weblogging. Here's a list of some of the terms we use in this manual without a whole lot of background.

Weblog: A set of web pages and RSS/Atom feeds that display weblog entries written by the weblog authors, uploaded images, bookmarks and comments posted by visitors. Weblog entries are displayed on the main page of the weblog and in the weblog's feeds in reverse chronological order.
Weblog entry: A single weblog entry with a title, publication timestamp, summary, content and some settings that indicate if and when comments are allowed.
Comment: A comment posted by a visitor to a weblog and regarding one specific weblog post. A comment has an email address, a publication timestamp and some content.
Trackback: A comment posted by a remote weblog regarding one specific weblog post. Trackbacks are stored as comments by BorneoBlog
Templates: Each weblog is defined by a set of HTML and CSS templates that provide the layout and styles for the weblog. Templates are authored using Velocity template language.
Feed: A feed is an XML representation of the most recent entries, comments or other data. Folks can subscribe to your feed to be alerted of new weblog entries and comments posted. BorneoBlog supports both RSS and Atom formats for feeds.
Feed reader: Software that makes it easy to subscribe to and read feeds, e.g. Firefox RSS Reader, Google Reader, Net News Wire, Feed Demon, etc.
Blog client: Software that makes it easy to post to your weblog, e.g. Ecto and Mars Edit.

2. Getting Started With BorneoBlog

Once you've logged into Borneosoft applications you should be able to open BorneoBlog by clicking menu File -> Open My Blog. To provide a little extra assistance, BorneoBlog displays a status bar at the top of each editor page.

Figure 1. My Blog Main Menu

The status bar shows you the login id that you use and it also shows some links for easy navigation. You can go back to the main application by clicking Main Frame or you can logout by clicking Logout.

The main menu will bring you to the blog editing page where you edit weblog entries, review comments, and manage your media files.

2.1. Creating and Editing Weblog Entry

You can create new weblog entry by clicking 'New Entry' in the main menu page. It will bring you to the editing page.

Figure 2. Blog Editing Page

You can also access the blog editing page by using Create & Edit -> New Entry page (also known as the Weblog editor page) to create, edit and publish weblog entries. Using this page, you can set entry title, category, content and summary. You can also set some advanced settings by expanding the Plugins To Apply and Advanced Settings controls at the bottom of the page. Let's review those fields, buttons and settings.

2.1.1. Weblog Editor Fields

Let's discuss each of the fields on the New Entry page, so you know how to use them.

Title – Each weblog entry must have a title. Be careful when you pick your title, it will be used in the link to your weblog entry. For best results, do use titles that are short and to-the-point. Don't include any HTML in your titles, just plain text – if you want your titles to be bold, then customize your templates instead of embedding HTML in your titles.
Status – This read-only field tells you about the current state of the weblog entry that you are editing. There are three possible status settings:
- Not Saved – the entry has never been saved
- Draft – the entry is saved as a draft and is not yet visible to your weblog's readers
- Published – the entry has been published and is visible to your weblog's readers
Permalink – this read-only field is the permalink link to your weblog entry. It is set the first time that you save an entry, based on the title at the time you save – and it cannot be changed later.
Category – You can pick one category for your weblog entry. Categories are for folks who want to organized the entries in their weblog into a small-set of fixed and possible hierarchical categories, defined by the weblog admin (that's probably you). You can add and remove categories via the Categories page.
Tags – (optional) In addition to assigning each of your weblog entries to a category you can also tag them. You can assign a list of tags to each entry. You can use any tag name you want. Separate your tags with spaces. Currently, the only way to do multi-word tags is to use an underbar, for example to tag something with "news update" you would use the tag news_update.
Content – This is the main body of your weblog entry, in HTML format. We try to make that easy by providing two ways to edit the content. Via the Settings page, you can pick either of these:
- Rich Text Editor – a rich-text editor that's designed to make editing HTML as easy as using MS Word or Open Office.
- Text Editor – a plain-text editor that you can use to edit the raw HTML markup of your weblog entries. Don't use this unless you know HTML.
Summary – (optional) If you wish, you can enter a short summary of your weblog post. If you do so, then the short summary will be displayed on the main page of your weblog and your readers will have to click a Read More link to get to the full-content. Some bloggers like to do this when they have very long post and they don't want that long post to dominate the main page of their weblog.

2.1.2. Weblog Editor Buttons

Here's a guide to the buttons that appear on the Weblog editor page.

Post to weblog – Using this button will publish your weblog entry and make it visible to the world. Make sure you're happy with your post before you publish because once something is published on the web, and grabbed by the blog aggregators and search engines, there's really no way to un-publish it.
Save as draft – this will save your weblog post for later editing, but will not publish it to the web. When you're working on a new weblog entry, use Save as draft often so you won't lose your post in the event of internet connection loss or session time-out.
Delete entry – use this to delete the current weblog entry, you'll be asked to confirm.
Full preview – You won't see this button until you've saved your entry as a draft. It allows you to view, in a separate window, a preview of your entry, displayed using the layout and style of your blog.

2.1.3. Weblog Editor Plugin Settings

If you expand the Plugins to Apply control, you'll see a set of check-boxes, one for each Weblog Entry Plugin that is available. Check the ones that you'd like to apply to your current weblog entry. If you have a favorite plugin, one that you want to use on every entry, then you can set it as a default on your weblog's Settings page.

Figure 3. Plugins To Apply

2.1.4. Weblog Editor Advanced Settings

If you expand the Advanced Settings control, you'll see what's below.

Figure 4. Advanced Settings

All of these are optional settings.

Pub Time – if you'd like to set the publication time of your weblog entry to a specific time, possibly one in the future, you can do so here.
Allow comments for – this setting allows you to turn comments on/off for your weblog entry and to limit the number of days that comments are allowed.
Text reads right-to-left – this settings allows you to set the reads right-to-left flag for a weblog entry. Currently, none of the stock templates respect this setting.
Enclosure URL: if you'd like to include a audio, video or image file as a podcast in your weblog's RSS feed, then enter the URL of that file here.

2.2. Finding and Editing Weblog Entries

Figure 5. Edit Entries Page

All of your weblog entries are saved in a database. Once your entries scroll off the front page or off the recent entries list of the weblog editor page, they are still available via next and previous links displayed on your weblog and via the weblog calendar that is included in most weblog themes. You can also access your entries via the Edit Entries page, which allows you to search entries via keyword, category, tags, date and status.

2.3. Managing Categories

Each weblog can define its own unique list of categories to be used for categorizing weblog entries, using the Categories page shown below. When you or another author of your weblog creates a new entry you must choose one of the categories you have defined.

Figure 6. Managing Categories

You can use the Categories page to add new categories and to edit your existing ones. You can change category names if you wish. And you can also delete categories and if a category is in use you will be asked to recategorize the entries in that category.

You can also define a hierarchy of categories and move categories around in that hierarchy, but support for hierarchical categories is somewhat limited in most themes. Unless you are prepared to do some customization via template editing, you probably don't want to use hierarchical categories.

2.4. Managing Your Weblog's Blogroll

Figure 7. Managing Bookmarks

BorneoBlog makes it easy to maintain a blogroll, that is, a list of your favorite weblogs and web sites that is displayed in the sidebar of your weblog. Individual blogroll items are known as bookmarks. Use the Create & Edit:Bookmarks page to add, edit and delete bookmarks and bookmark folders in your blogroll.

2.5. Uploading Images and Other Files to Your Weblog

Figure 8. Media File View Page

If you'd like to upload images or other files for use in your weblog, go to your weblog's Create & Edit -> Media Files page. From there you can upload files, browse and search files. You can also manage your files, organize them into directories and post them to your weblog. We'll discuss all of the things you can do with Media Files via the Media Filew View page and the Media File browser that we've added to the Weblog Editor.

2.5.1. How to Upload Files

Borneosoft Blog - Adding Media Files Page

Figure 9. Adding Media Files Page

To upload files you follow the Add Media File link in the top right of the page. You will see the Media File Add page.

You can upload up to five files at a time and you can enter information about the images including title, description, copyright statement and tags. You can pick which directory should receive the uploaded images.

You can also decide whether or not you want your images to be included in the Gallery, which means that they will be made available in the Media File Feed for your blog.

Figure 10. Uploaded Images

After your file upload completes, BorneoBlog will show you the Upload Complete page with the files that you uploaded and will offer to include them in a new weblog post for you. You can choose any or all of the images, or you can skip this step and return to the Media File View.

2.5.2. How to Edit and Update Files

Figure 11. Media File Edit Page

From the Media File View page, you can edit any Media File simply by clicking on it. When you click you will be shown the Media File Edit page (below). From this page, you can edit the same information that you entered when you uploaded the file.

You can also upload a new version of the file. The file will maintain the same URL as before the update, so no worries about broken links. If the file is an image, a new thumbnail will be generated for you and image size information will be updated.

2.5.3. How to use Media File Directories

Figure 12. Adding New Directory

You can use directories to organize your Media Files. You can move files around and not worry about breaking any links because directory and file names are not part of URLs.

To create a new directory, enter a new directory name in the new directory control, and click the create button.

To navigate into a directory in the Media File View page, simply click on the directory.

2.5.4. How to delete Media Files

To delete Media Files, go to the Media File View page, select the checkboxes of the files you wish to delete and then click the Delete button. You will have to confirm the delete before it executes.

2.5.5. How to delete Media File Directories

To delete Media File Directories you must first empty them out. You can only delete directories that are empty.

2.5.6. How to Post Images to Your Weblog

Figure 13. Post Image to Weblog

We explained above how to post images during the upload process. You can also post images to your weblog directly from the Media File View page.

Look for the little green plus sign and click it to see the Create Weblog Post menu.

When you click Post in Weblog, BorneoBlog will create a new weblog and include your Media File. If it's an image, BorneoBlog will also include the image thumbnail.

2.5.7. How to Post a Podcast to Your Weblog

Look for the little green plus sign and click it to see the Create Weblog Post menu.

When you click Post in Weblog as Podcast, BorneoBlog will create a new weblog and include your Media File in the post content and as an enclosure. As an enclosure, your file will be referenced in your weblog's RSS/Atom feed so that podcast readers can fetch it.

2.6. Podcasting with BorneoBlog

BorneoBlog includes support for podcasting, a way to distribute files through your weblog's newsfeed. Typically, folks use podcasting to distribute audio files, but the technique can be used to distribute any type of file. Specialized podcast client software downloads the audio files that are referenced in your newsfeed and copies them to a music player, such as an MP3 player.

This section assumes that you want to upload your podcasts to some other server, one with lots of space and bandwidth, and not to BorneoBlog. If you want to upload your podcasts to BorneoBlog, then see Section 2.5.7 for an explanation of posting a Media File to your weblog as a podcast.

2.6.1. How to Create a Podcast Feed with BorneoBlog

In BorneoBlog a Podcast is like an attachment to a weblog entry. Here are the steps involved in Podcasting with BorneoBlog:

Record an interesting Podcast (that's the hard part, by the way) and save your Podcast in MP3 format or whatever format you prefer.
Upload your Podcast to a web server somewhere and take note of your Podcast's URL. For example, if you were to upload a file to BorneoBlog, then the URL might look something like this: http://www.borneosoft.net/Borneosoft/_blog/john_at_borneosoft.net/mediaresource/4182edd4-ae0c-4938-aa63-252e2430c061.
Create a new BorneoBlog weblog entry announcing your new Podcast. You might want to provide a link to it so that those without a Podcast client can click to download it directly. For example: Hey now! I just created my first Podcast you can download it here:
<a href="http://www.borneosoft.net/Borneosoft/_blog/john_at_borneosoft.net/mediaresource/4182edd4-ae0c-4938-aa63-252e2430c061">mycast.mp3</a>
And the most important step: in the lower-half of the weblog editor page, you'll see an expandable control labelled Advanced Settings. Click on that to expand the control and paste in the URL of your podcast.
Once your blog post is ready, save it as a draft or publish it. Once you've done that you'll see that the Advanced Settings control has picked up the content-type and file-size of your podcast. If not, then BorneoBlog could not access your podcast due to network problems or perhaps a bad URL. Make sure the URL is correct and save again. If your podcast is OK, you'll see something like this:

Figure 14. Podcast URL Field
BorneoBlog will add the podcast to your RSS newsfeed as an <enclosure>. You can check this by looking at your RSS newsfeed and any podcast software that is subscribed to your feed will pick it up automatically. <enclosure url="http://www.borneosoft.net/Borneosoft/_blog/john_at_borneosoft.net/mediaresource/4182edd4-ae0c-4938-aa63-252e2430c061" type="audio/x-mpeg" length="3409127" />

3. Working with Comments and Trackbacks

BorneoBlog supports weblog comments and trackbacks, which provide a way for other bloggers to add comments to your blog remotely.

3.1. Comment Notification Via Email

You should take the time to read comments, to respond where appropriate and, when you receive spam or other forms of offensive comments, delete them from your weblog. You can't respond to comments if you don't know when you get one, so make sure you enable email notification of comments. You can do that on the Weblog Settings page.

You will receive an email every time you get a new comment and the email will include the text of the comment, a link to the entry that was commented upon and a link to the comment management page, shown below, where you may choose to approve, mark as spam or even delete the new comment.

3.2. Comment Management

Figure 15. Comments Page

You can use the Comments page to manage your weblog comments. You can mark comments as spam or delete them entirely. You can search comments by keyword, date and status. You will also use the Comments page to approve new comments.

A word about status

You can't edit comments, but you can mark them as spam or dis-approve them.

How to get to the Comments page

There are a couple of ways to get to the Comments page. You can use BorneoBlog's tabbed menu to go there and manage comment across your entire weblog. If you've got email notification of new comments turned on, then you might arrive at the Comments page via a link sent to you in your email.

You can also manage comments for just one weblog. When you are editing a weblog entry with comments you'll see a link in the top-right corner of the weblog editor page like the one below, which you can use to access the entry's comments.

3.3. Comment Moderation

Eeach new comment will be marked as pending and unapproved and will not appear on your weblog. To check for new comments, go to the Comments page to check for and either approve or delete new comments. If you've got comment notification enabled, make sure you also enable comment notification so you'll know when new comments arrive. To moderate comments, use the comment management page, described below.

How to moderate comments

Review each new comment and decide if it is to be approved for display, marked as spam and hidden or deleted entirely.
Only comments that are marked as approved and are not spam will be displayed on your weblog. So set (or unset) the corresponding checkboxes for each comment, or leave them the way they are.
When you are done. Click the save changes button at the bottom of the page. You'll see that comments that were pending are no longer pending and those that you marked for delete will be gone.

3.4. Preventing Weblog Spam

There are three forms of comment spam that can affect your weblog:

Comment spam: spam that arrives via the comment form on your weblog. Sometimes spam comments are added by a human and sometimes by a computer program known as a spambot.
Trackback spam: spam that arrives via trackbacks sent by a spambot.
Referrer spam: spam that arrives in web requests and appears on the Referrers page of your BorneoBlog blog or on your blog (but only if your blog theme uses the #showReferrers() macro).

Fortunately, there are counter-measures for each type of spam. Here are BorneoBlog's built in spam prevention measures:

Pluggable comment authentication. By default, BorneoBlog asks each commenter a simple math question to ensure that they are a person and not a spam robot.
Pluggable comment validation. BorneoBlog includes five comment validators below.
- Excess links validator will mark comments with more than three links as spam (default: on)
- Excess size validator marks any comment with more than 1000 characters as spam (default: on)
- Blacklist validator marks comments containing any of your site's designated bad words as spam (default: on)
- Trackback verification validator will check incoming trackbacks to ensure that they link to you.
- Akismet validator allows you to use the Akismet.com spam prevention service.
Comment throttling. If your site is being abused by a spam robot your site administrator can set up throttling, which will watch for abusers and ban IP addresses that are posting too many comments too quickly. Please send email to support@borneosoft.com

But nothing beats comment moderation

Even if you've got all of those measures enabled you should still enable email notification of comments so that you are constantly aware of new comments on your weblog. None of the measures are 100% effective. Comments moderation allows you to approve or dis-approve the contents of the comments.

Three levels of blacklisting

BorneoBlog uses a blacklist, a lists of words which are used to check incoming comments, trackbacks and referrers for spam. The blacklist includes several thousand words and regular expressions which which are used to check incoming comments and trackbacks. If the name, URL or content of a comment or trackback includes one of the blacklist words or matches one of the expressions then that comment or trackback is marked as spam and is not displayed on your weblog, unless you use the comment management page to unmark it. Actually, there are three levels of blacklist:

Level 1 blacklist: This is the built-in blacklist, the one that comes with BorneoBlog
Level 2 blacklist: This is the site wide blacklist.
LLevel 3 blacklist: Weblog specific blacklist, which you control in the Weblog Settings page of your weblog.

Incoming comments and trackbacks are checked against all three levels of blacklist. Incoming referrers, however, are only checked against the levels 2 and 3 blacklist.

How to add words and expressions to the blacklist

If you have a spam problem on your weblog, here's how you manage your blacklist:

Go to the Weblog Settings page and scroll down to the blacklist fields
Enter your spam words, one per line
Lines that begin with a left parenthesis will be treated as regular expressions (see the Java API documentation for javax.util.regex.Pattern for a guide to regular expressions). Don't try to use a regular expression unless you really know what you're doing.

3.5. Sending Trackbacks

If you are writing about something you read on another weblog, you want to let the author and readers of that weblog know that you are doing so, and that other weblog is trackback enabled, then you should send that weblog a trackback ping. Here's a story that illustrates how trackback works:

You read an interesting blog entry on Otto's blog. You notice that Otto's blog entry has a trackback URL, so instead of leaving a comment on Otto's blog you decide to comment by writing a blog entry in your own blog. You copy that trackback URL (using ALT-C, or right-click-copy, or whatever) cause you'll need it later.
You go to your blog and write a new blog entry in response to Otto's entry. Click the Post to Weblog button to publish your new entry. After you publish, scroll down on the New Entry page until you see the following text field and button:

Figure 16. Send Trackback Control
Enter the trackback URL from Otto's blog entry into the text field and click the Send Trackback button. BorneoBlog will respond by printing the response received from Otto's blog server.
You should now see your trackback listed among the comments on Otto's blog entry.

4. Choosing Your Weblog Theme

Figure 17. Choosing Weblog Theme

A weblog theme is a set of templates, style-sheets and image that determine how your weblog will be displayed. A theme can define both the layout and color-scheme of your weblog. You can pick from one of a number of predefined themes. Some themes will allow you to control design by using a stylesheet. Other themes require you to edit the templates that define the theme if you want to customize them.

You can access BorneoBlog's theme and template features for your weblog via the Design menu.

The Theme menu leads you to the theme chooser page, shown below. Using this page you can pick from one or more different themes for your weblog.

5. Managing Your Weblog Preferences

As a BorneoBlog user, you are free to customize the settings of your weblog as you wish. When you establish your BorneoBlog user account, you can choose a theme for your website. Later, you can use the theme switcher to switch to a different theme. Or, if you know something about HTML and CSS you can customize the look-and-feel and layout of your weblog yourself by modifying the page templates that make up your site and by adding new pages. Best of all, you can do all of this through the web-based BorneoBlog Editor UI.

5.1. Weblog Settings

The Preferences:Settings page allows you to set the configuration parameters for your weblog. Here is an explanation of each of the settings on the weblog Preferences:Settings page:

5.1.1. General Settings

Borneosoft Blog - Weblog General Settings

Figure 18. Weblog General Settings

Title - The title of your weblog may include HTML, but the HTML will be stripped out in your RSS feed. You can access your title in a page template with the expression #showWebsiteTitle()
Tagline – Short description or sub title of your weblog. May include HTML, but the HTML will be stripped out in your RSS feed. You can access your tagline in a page template with the expression #showWebsiteDescription().
Icon - The image file name (ex: thumbnail.jpg) or image url (ex: http://yoursite/thumbnail.com) that shows on some of the default themes. You'll need to upload the image via the Create & Edit:File Uploads tab first.
About your blog – A more detailed description of the blog or blog author(s) that shows on some of the default themes.
Email address of weblog owner: Enter the email address that you would like people to use to contact the person in charge of your blog; usually that's you. To thwart spammers, your email address will be obfuscated when displayed on your blog. Please enter a valid address, otherwise BorneoBlog's email features will not work.
Weblog editor page to be used - Choose a weblog editor page, some are rich-text editors:
- editor-text.jsp: Simple text editor, you must enter HTML
- editor-rte.jsp: Rich text editor (works in Firefox and IE but not Safari)
Weblog is active: un-check this box to indicate that your weblog is no longer active and should not appear in hot-blog and other weblog listing on the site. You might want to do this if you take a very long vacation or if you have decided to stop updating your weblog for some other reason.
Number of entries to display on weblog: Enter the maximum number of entries to be displayed on your weblog.

5.1.2. Internationalization Settings

Borneosoft Blog - Weblog Internationalization Settings

Figure 19. Weblog Internationalization Settings

I publish my weblog in multiple languages: check this box if you blog in multiple languages and would like to specify a language locale for each of your weblog entries.
Show my weblog entries from all languages on my home page: check this box if you'd like your weblog's main page to show your posts in all languages. If you don't check it, then readers will only see weblog entries from your default locale.
Locale set the default locale for your weblog.
Timezone: the timezone to be used in your weblog.

5.1.3. Comments Settings

Borneosoft Blog - Weblog Comments Settings

Figure 20. Weblog Comments Settings

Allow comments for your weblog? – Check this box to allow visitors to leave comments on your weblog
By default, allow comments for new entries – Check this box to enable comments on your weblog. You can also control comments on each individual weblog entry.
Default time to allow comments for new entries – Choose the default amount of time to allow comments for new blog entries. This setting may also be overridden using the Comment Settings section of the New Entry page.
Apply comment defaults to all existing entries? - If you check this box, when you click the Save button the comment defaults you have set will be applied to all existing comments.

5.1.4. Weblog Cient API Settings

Figure 21. Weblog Cient API Settings

Enable Blogger API for your weblog - Set to true to enable weblogging via the MetaWeblog API. This will allow you to use handy blogging clients like Ecto to post to your weblog.
Category for posts received via Blogger API - Choose the category for incoming posts made via the Blogger API. This only applies if you blogging client does not support categories.

5.1.5. Formatting Settings

Borneosoft Blog - Weblog Formatting Settings

Figure 22. Weblog Formatting Settings

Default entry formatters: this is the list of plug-ins to be enabled by default on a new weblog entry.

5.1.6. Spam Preventions Settings

Borneosoft Blog - Weblog Spam Preventions Settings

Figure 23. Weblog Spam Preventions Settings

Ignore incoming referrer URLs that contain any of these (comma-separated) words: - you can use this to filter out what referrers are accepted. Somewhat useful if you start getting hit by referrer spam, but not a complete solution to the referrer spam problem.

6. Using Weblog Pings

Weblog update pings provide a means for you to notify aggregation and indexing sites (for example Weblogs.com, Technorati and javablogs.com) that your weblog has changed so that they will pick up your latest content from your RSS feed.

BorneoBlog supports the conventional XML-RPC weblog update ping mechanism used by many sites for such notifications.

6.1. Registering with an Aggregator

Generally speaking, aggregation sites first require you to register your weblog with their site. During this registration process you normally provide both the HTTP URL and the RSS feed URL for your weblog. This is important because the ping message conveys only the normal HTTP URL of your site, and the site will use that to lookup the registered RSS feed URL to fetch from.

Aggregation sites that accept ping notifications generally publish the ping URL to use to ping their site on their (human-readable) web site. Once you have registered your site with an aggregator, you can set up your weblog to deliver pings to that site.

6.2. Ping Targets, Common and Custom

You can set up the BorneoBlog server to ping sites of your choice automatically whenever you post published updates to your weblog.

BorneoBlog uses the term ping target to refer to a site, such as an aggregator, that accepts weblog update ping notifications. A ping target is configured with a (display) name and the ping URL needed to reach the site. Before you can send a ping to a site, you must configure a ping target in BorneoBlog for the site. BorneoBlog supports the configuration of two types of ping targets:

common ping targets These are ping targets that are configured by a BorneoBlog administrator, and are available to be used by all users. This allows the ping URLs for several well-known aggregator sites to be configured once for everybody.
custom ping targets These are ping targets that are configured by individual users. If you don't find the site you wish to ping in one of the common ping targets, you can configure your own custom ping target.

6.3. Setting up Automated Pings

Borneosoft Blog - Automatic Ping Configuration Page

Figure 24. Automatic Ping Configuration Page

Once a ping target (either a common ping target or a custom ping target) has been configured for the site that you wish to ping, you can use the Weblog:Pings page to enable automatic pings and send manual pings.

To enable automatic pings to a ping target, find the ping target on the page and click the Enable link in the Automatic column. The status indicator turns to ON and the link changes to Disable (as shown for some sites in the screenshot above). To disable automatic pings to a ping target click the Disable link in the Automatic column. The status indicator turns to OFF and the link changes to Enable.

Custom ping targets that you have configured are displayed on this page in a separate table below the common ping targets; they work in the same way. You may need to scroll down the page to see them

When you have enabled automatic pinging for a ping target, BorneoBlog will automatically send a ping to that site whenever you publish a new weblog entry or update a published weblog entry.

Note: In actuality, BorneoBlog queues a request to send the ping and processes this request in the background, so that you can get on with your blogging. The ping queue is processed at an interval configured by the site administrator; this interval is 5 minutes in a default configuration. In case the aggregator site is temporarily unreachable, BorneoBlog will requeue your ping request and retry on subsequent passes through the queue; in a default configuration the ping is requeued for up to 3 ping attempts.

6.4. Sending a Manual Ping

You can also send a manual ping to a ping target using the Send Ping Now link listed for the target on the Weblog:Pings page. When you send a manual ping the ping is not queued, it is sent immediately and attempted only once. BorneoBlog shows you the response status (success or a failure message) that results from the ping. Using manual pings, you can test your custom ping targets to make sure that the URL you have entered is working properly.

You do not need to enable automatic pinging in order to send manual pings. You can send a manual ping whether or not you have enabled automatic pinging for that target.

You can use manual pings if you ping a site very rarely, or if you are feeling a bit impatient, and you don't want to wait for the next queue processing interval.

6.5. Creating and Editing Custom Ping Targets

You should find that most popular ping targets are listed among the common ping targets and you can ping these without needing to create a new custom one. If you don't find a common target listed for the site you wish to ping, you have two options. You can request that your administrator add a new common ping target; most likely, your friendly BorneoBlog administrator will be happy to add new common ping targets for aggregator sites that many other users will also be interested in using. Alternatively, you can add your own custom ping target using the Weblog:Custom Ping Targets page.

Note: Custom ping targets are a feature that the administrator can disable. If you do not see Weblog:Custom Ping Targets menu item, or any heading for Custom Ping Targets on the Weblog:Pings page, then an administrator has disabled it, and you will need to contact an administrator to get a new common ping target added.

Before adding a custom ping target, you must determine the proper ping URL for the site that you wish to ping. You must get this information from the aggregator's web site or from another knowledgeable source.

Borneosoft Blog - Custom Ping Targets Page

Figure 25. Custom Ping Targets Page Page

It can be hard to find the aggregator's documentation telling you the specific ping URL to use to notify their site. Commonly aggregators list this on their web site under a topic providing help about registering your feed, or under a topic providing information for developers. Keep in mind that some aggregators only use periodic polling and do not accept ping notifications at all. If you can't find any information about pinging on the aggregator's web site, the site may not support pinging.

Once you have found the proper ping URL, you can add your custom target using the Weblog:Custom Ping Targets page.

Click the Add New button to add a new custom ping target. This will bring up a form with a Name field and a Ping URL field. Fill in both fields, and click the Save button.

Figure 26. Edit Ping Target Form Page

Once you have created a custom ping target, you will see it listed on the Weblog:Custom Ping Targets page. From this page, you can further edit it or delete it. To enable automatic pings or send manual using your custom ping targets, use the Weblog:Pings page

The ping target's name must be unique among your own custom targets, and the Ping URL must be a properly formed URL with a known hostname (or a raw IP address). If any of these conditions are not met, the Save will fail, and you will get an error indication telling you what was wrong with your entry

6.6. More on Registering with an Aggregator

When you register with an aggregator, you will usually need to provide two pieces of information as part of the registration, your blog's base (HTML) url and your RSS feed (XML) URL. Make sure to read the aggregator's documentation and help on registering.

For BorneoBlog weblogs, you get your weblog's base URL by viewing your weblog and taking the URL to the point just following your weblog's handle. (In other words it should end with page/handlenamehere).

The RSS feed URL for your whole feed can be obtained by substituting page in your weblog's URL with RSS. Most browsers will display this link in the status bar when you place your mouse over RSS badge (the little orange XML box) on your weblog page.

You also have category-specific feeds, which are useful for registering with topical aggregators. To get a category-specific feed URL, just append ?catname=/category/path where /category/path is the full path of the category. The "basic" theme has some category RSS feeds just below the RSS badge in the righthand vertical bar.

Some aggregators can also scrape (read and parse the HTML of your weblog) to discover the feed URL automatically when provided with the HTML URL. The default BorneoBlog theme template pages include hints in the form of tags that many sites can use to determine the feed URL automatically.