Every time I post, the ping to weblogs.com times out

July 24, 2003 6:39 PM

Every time I post, the ping to weblogs.com times out. The post goes through, so I guess we're all OK, but I thought I'd mention it. Does this seem to be a regular thing for everybody else?
posted by weston to Bugs at 6:39 PM (12 comments total)

Error Occurred While Processing Request
The request has exceeded the allowable time limit Tag: cfhttp

The error occurred in C:\metafilter sites\www.metafilter.com\contribute\post_preview.mefi: line 38

36 :
37 : < !--- ping weblogs.com --->
38 : <cfhttp url="http://newhome.weblogs.com/pingSiteForm?name=MetaFilter&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.metafilter.com%2F" method="GET" resolveurl="false"></cfhttp>
39 :
40 : < !--- ping blogchatterweblogs.com --->
posted by weston at 6:41 PM on July 24, 2003

Happens with Moveable Type lately too. It's not a Mefi-specific problem, it would seem.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 7:27 PM on July 24, 2003

Whoa! I was just coming here to post the same thing! And yes, it times out for me every single time.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 7:28 PM on July 24, 2003

Weblogs.com shows the frontpage of MeFi having been updated only once in the last three hours, when in fact, it's been updated three times. Not so efficient.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 7:36 PM on July 24, 2003

This is likely due to the request timing out before weblogs.com replies. I've noticed that though my MT install gives a similar error that the pings do go through.


For MT users there is a fix available. It involves editing the XMLRPC.pm file so isn't for the meek.
posted by cedar at 5:01 AM on July 25, 2003

also discussed here, back on jun 23.
posted by crunchland at 5:10 AM on July 25, 2003

Send an email to Dave Winer, asking him to beef up the server that weblogs.com runs on. There's not much I can do on my end.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 3:15 PM on July 25, 2003

How critical is it to ping weblogs.com? Is it worth timing out on 2 out of 3 front page posts? What if we just ... didn't?
posted by monju_bosatsu at 4:28 PM on July 25, 2003

Or... is there some way to fork the pinging job out to another program or process?

(Sorry about the re-discuss, everybody ...)
posted by weston at 4:58 PM on July 25, 2003

I could rewrite the ping to work with blo.gs instead, but more people use weblogs.com.

Dozens of apps are built on it, people's favorite bookmarks, rss-to-email scripts, technorati, etc are all built on top of weblogs.com's ping output. If we're not hitting it, no one is getting the benefit of all those other services.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 5:13 PM on July 25, 2003

What if you didn't tie the ping to posting? If you just pinged it every three hours or so, you could be reasonably sure that someone would have posted something in that time.
posted by timeistight at 5:19 PM on July 25, 2003

Pings from Languagehat only get to weblogs.com one out of five times, I'd say. Annoying, but I'm not going to be the one to write Dave Winer. I may be dumb, but I ain't stupid.
posted by languagehat at 2:22 PM on July 26, 2003