Title: Ping behavior question
Last modified: August 18, 2016

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# Ping behavior question

 *  Resolved [theglobalguy](https://wordpress.org/support/users/theglobalguy/)
 * (@theglobalguy)
 * [20 years, 9 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/ping-behavior-question/)
 * I use my site as more of a travelogue than a day to day blog. When I’m on the
   road I often write quick articles that are pretty unpolished and rough. Later(
   months later in some cases) I like to go back and update them with photos, better
   text, and just generally improve the writing.
 * When I edit an older post, I know that WP generates a ping to pingomatic, or 
   whatever services I’ve got listed. My question is, does this ping contain a pointer
   to the actual article I’ve edited, or does it just say that the site has been
   updated?

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

 *  Moderator [James Huff](https://wordpress.org/support/users/macmanx/)
 * (@macmanx)
 * [20 years, 9 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/ping-behavior-question/#post-248852)
 * The ping just says that your site has been updated. Your RSS feed contains the
   time and date stamp of each post’s most recent edit. The pinged service then 
   compares these time and date stamps with what they have on file as your most 
   recent update. If any of the time and date stamps are more recent than what they
   have on file, your blog, or the specific post(s) containing these more recent
   time and date stamps will be marked as updated. So, from a certain point of view,
   the update service does all the hard work. Your blog simply states the facts,
   and the update service determines what has and has not been updated.
 *  Thread Starter [theglobalguy](https://wordpress.org/support/users/theglobalguy/)
 * (@theglobalguy)
 * [20 years, 9 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/ping-behavior-question/#post-248922)
 * Thanks Macmanx, that was exactly the kind of information I was looking for. Of
   course that leads to a follow-up question about best practices for RSS feeds.
   If I’m changing an older post that’s dropped off of the RSS feed, then the update
   service still won’t know about it.
 * Is it considered polite to keep your RSS feed as small as possible, or can I 
   include the last year of posts in it, (maybe 20 articles)? I supposed I can keep
   the volume of traffic down by just including the exerpts in the feed, instead
   of the entire article.
 * Is there a “standard” for RSS publishing?
 *  Moderator [James Huff](https://wordpress.org/support/users/macmanx/)
 * (@macmanx)
 * [20 years, 9 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/ping-behavior-question/#post-248953)
 * > If I’m changing an older post that’s dropped off of the RSS feed, then the 
   > update service still won’t know about it.
 * Exactly.
 * > Is there a “standard” for RSS publishing?
 * No, not really. I have seen feeds as small as 5 articles and as large as 50. 
   As for using excerpts, that’s more of an ethics question. There are quite a few
   bad individuals out there who steal RSS feeds and display them on their blog 
   as if they were their own posts. The logical solution to this, of course, if 
   to run your RSS feed with excerpts (thus removing all hyperlinks and HTML formatting,
   and requiring the reader to visit your post to read the rest of it). The other
   solution is to publish your feed as full text (which includes hyperlinks) and
   use this plugin: [http://blog.taragana.com/index.php/archive/wordpress-plugin-to-automatically-add-copyright-message-to-your-rss-atom-feeds/](http://blog.taragana.com/index.php/archive/wordpress-plugin-to-automatically-add-copyright-message-to-your-rss-atom-feeds/)

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

The topic ‘Ping behavior question’ is closed to new replies.

 * In: [Fixing WordPress](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/how-to-and-troubleshooting/)
 * 3 replies
 * 2 participants
 * Last reply from: [James Huff](https://wordpress.org/support/users/macmanx/)
 * Last activity: [20 years, 9 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/ping-behavior-question/#post-248953)
 * Status: resolved

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