Descripions for some features

[newtech1]

As I am creating the User Guide there are some features that I need to know how they work:

NEW POST
Send trackbacks-when that is checked, what exactly is happening?
Send XMLRPC pings-(If I remember correctly, this is a plug-in), what exactly happening when this is clicked?

CATEGORIES
Show on Front Page-is this to prevent posts in this category to show up on user's blog front page or on the main summary page for all blogs?

NEW LINK
Feed-Please define this and how it works

[jondaley]

xmlrpc is not a plugin, but sends pings to a server and then people can monitor your (and other) blogs there, rather than having to go to your blog directly.

send trackbacks scans your post and looks for urls to ping, to let the other blogger know that you linked to him, and are presumably writing about him.
If you have a url in your post, and check the trackbacks button, you will see another screen to do stuff after posting.

show on main page, I don't know how (if) it affects summary posting, but it does keep posts off of the front page. For my limedaley.com site, I have almost all posts set to not show on the main page, but only show when I click on the post directly, or in some cases, when I click on the category.

feed: see my blog jon.limedaley.com to see how the rss feeds get added automatically for the links part of the side panel. This way, you template can just have an {if $feed} print $feed {/if} sort of code for every link, and then it only appears as appropriate.

[newtech1]

xmlrpc sends pings to a server and then people can monitor your (and other) blogs there, rather than having to go to your blog directly.

If I am understanding you correctly when this is checked it sends a ping (of the post) to a server.
How do you setup what server it goes to?
How I understand xmlrpc is that it is a feature where you can view a post on a cell phone or other mobile device. How does this relate to this feature?

feed: see my blog jon.limedaley.com to see how the rss feeds get added automatically for the links part of the side panel. This way, you template can just have an {if $feed} print $feed {/if} sort of code for every link, and then it only appears as appropriate.

I think I am understanding this. If the linked website has a rss, then you can put the rss in this field.

[jondaley]

there are different methods of xml stuff, one is the one I was talking about, configurable through the admin interface, and the other is the one you are talking about, and I know less about it. I don't think it is entirely a plugin.

feeds: yes, you have it correct.

[newtech1]

So the one you are talking about is where in admin, I as an administrator can put in websites that can receive pings. I am assuming the way this works is that when a post is made and this is enabled that the post will be sent to a service that makes that post enabled in the world wide web, news services, etc. Is this correct?

If so, does anybody know of specific sites that receive pings from blogs to do this? I notice there is one that is the default. I am going to try to find a way to access them and see if some pings I have done are there.

EDIT
I just did some testing with the post ping xmlrpc feature. The link at http://www.rpc.weblogs.com to the post does not show the post URL, just a link to the blog homepage. The way the http://www.rpc.weblogs.com feature appears to work is that it makes all pings from blog sites to appear on its site. (But not the trackback or permalink for the actual post). Then when a subscriber (who has the proper software) wants to see whenever a post is made by your website, goes to the http://www.rpc.weblogs.com pages to search for posts by your site.
So, unless someone is subscribing to a service that actually is checking for posts by you, your post does not go out to news services, the www, etc.
So, if you want your posts to go out to a news wire, etc. you need to find a service that does that and enter their ping url into the proper section in admin. Some time I will get a list of these and put it into the Wiki.

[Monjo]

http://pingomatic.com/about/ may help you