simplify ping target maintenance?

[Glen Mazza <gl...@gmail.com>]

Team,  I'm late to the blogging software game so don't know the whole 
story, but Apache Roller presently provides users two ping-related tabs:

1.) "Common Ping Targets" set up by the blog administrators. Individual 
bloggers are welcome to disable or enable whichever ones they want.

2.) "Custom Ping Targets",  or those targets not set up by 
administrators.  Individual blog owners can identify their own ping 
targets and activate them here, good just for the blog.

I don't think ping targets are nearly as important today as they were 
several years ago, before Google became GOOGLE.  Nowadays, you just blog 
and set the correct META description elements, and in a few days Google 
has your blog entry and returns it to web searchers.  I never hear 
people talking about ping targets today (and three out of the four 
targets we presently support OOTB appear to be really minor websites), 
they're primarily concerned about SEO and getting to the first page of 
Google returns.

If I'm correct that ping targets are falling in importance, I wonder if 
we should scale down and simplify Roller's functionality in this area, 
namely move from two tabs to one with respect to ping targets.  One 
solution could be discontinuing the custom ping targets page, for the 
few individual bloggers caring about a new ping target, he can just ask 
the blog administrator for him to include for all bloggers.  There 
probably aren't many additional ping targets beyond the four that Roller 
5.1 already offers OOTB anyway, and arguably an administrator should 
have to manually approve a ping target before it can be enabled.  WDYT?

Cheers,
Glen

Re: Remove Custom Ping Target Page? (Re: simplify ping target maintenance?)

[Glen Mazza <gl...@gmail.com>]

No, I don't mind keeping pings as that's something blog servers should 
be able to handle and it's a useful technology that can serve other 
purposes within some company intranets, it's just that we don't need two 
tabs for them anymore.  I'll also be removing the unused/empty 
"pingcategory" table which allowed for pinging conditional on the blog 
category of the new blog entry, as there's no coding for it in Roller 
trunk and is also overkill given ping servers' reduced usage today.

Glen

On 02/27/2014 01:40 AM, Anil Gangolli wrote:
> +1
>
> You may want to circulate this on the user list.  I don't know how 
> much this feature is used anymore.  Maybe the entire ping 
> functionality can go.
>
> --a.
>
>
> On 2/25/14, 6:17 PM, Glen Mazza wrote:
>> Team, as part of modernizing Roller in 5.1 I'd like us to move from 
>> two Pings-related tabs to just one to account for their diminished 
>> usage today.  In particular, remove the blog-level Custom Ping 
>> Targets tab.  We would just have a single Pings tab for the user to 
>> enable/disable ping targets defined by the blog administrator. 
>

Re: Remove Custom Ping Target Page? (Re: simplify ping target maintenance?)

[Anil Gangolli <an...@busybuddha.org>]

+1

You may want to circulate this on the user list.  I don't know how much 
this feature is used anymore.  Maybe the entire ping functionality can go.

--a.


On 2/25/14, 6:17 PM, Glen Mazza wrote:
> Team, as part of modernizing Roller in 5.1 I'd like us to move from 
> two Pings-related tabs to just one to account for their diminished 
> usage today.  In particular, remove the blog-level Custom Ping Targets 
> tab.  We would just have a single Pings tab for the user to 
> enable/disable ping targets defined by the blog administrator. 

Remove Custom Ping Target Page? (Re: simplify ping target maintenance?)

[Glen Mazza <gl...@gmail.com>]

Team, as part of modernizing Roller in 5.1 I'd like us to move from two 
Pings-related tabs to just one to account for their diminished usage 
today.  In particular, remove the blog-level Custom Ping Targets tab.  
We would just have a single Pings tab for the user to enable/disable 
ping targets defined by the blog administrator.

This change would have no impact on one-user blogs where the blog admin 
is the blogger, as he can add whatever ping targets he wants still on 
the admin-level Ping targets tab.  Also, individual bloggers would still 
have access to their own Pings tab to enable or disable whatever ping 
targets are defined by the administrator. However, this change will 
require individual bloggers who have another ping target they would like 
to use (a rare situation today) to get their Admin to add it to the 
Pings tab, with a default of either ON or OFF, for the individual 
blogger to then activate (if OFF) on his own Pings tab for his blog.  WDYT?

Regards,
Glen


On 01/18/2014 11:12 PM, Glen Mazza wrote:
> Team, I'm late to the blogging software game so don't know the whole 
> story, but Apache Roller presently provides users two ping-related tabs:
>
> 1.) "Common Ping Targets" set up by the blog administrators. 
> Individual bloggers are welcome to disable or enable whichever ones 
> they want.
>
> 2.) "Custom Ping Targets",  or those targets not set up by 
> administrators.  Individual blog owners can identify their own ping 
> targets and activate them here, good just for the blog.
>
> I don't think ping targets are nearly as important today as they were 
> several years ago, before Google became GOOGLE.  Nowadays, you just 
> blog and set the correct META description elements, and in a few days 
> Google has your blog entry and returns it to web searchers.  I never 
> hear people talking about ping targets today (and three out of the 
> four targets we presently support OOTB appear to be really minor 
> websites), they're primarily concerned about SEO and getting to the 
> first page of Google returns.
>
> If I'm correct that ping targets are falling in importance, I wonder 
> if we should scale down and simplify Roller's functionality in this 
> area, namely move from two tabs to one with respect to ping targets.  
> One solution could be discontinuing the custom ping targets page, for 
> the few individual bloggers caring about a new ping target, he can 
> just ask the blog administrator for him to include for all bloggers.  
> There probably aren't many additional ping targets beyond the four 
> that Roller 5.1 already offers OOTB anyway, and arguably an 
> administrator should have to manually approve a ping target before it 
> can be enabled.  WDYT?
>
> Cheers,
> Glen
>