StarPinger, send blog pings from your desktop

What Is StarPinger ?

Take your favorite ping service (pingoat, pingomatic) and put it in a program and add new features like:

StarPinger in batch mode

You can run StarPinger from the command prompt and from a batch file. If you don't know what a command prompt is please use google before reading this document.

Please note: it is advisable that you install StarPinger with the 'Windows installer' otherwise it will be difficult to locate the directory where StarPinger is installed.
Please note: StarPinger in batch mode is only available with a paid account.

Running StarPinger in batch mode means that you start StarPinger from the command prompt or from a batch file (or script). When running in batch mode StarPinger will not display a interface with buttons and lists.

The text file

You give StarPinger commands via a normal text file. A example of a text file is listed below.
username=bill
password=bill
blogids=1,5,6
fullstatus=0
noproxy=0

# the services you like to ping
http://rpc.weblogs.com:80/RPC2
http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/
http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2
http://rpc.pingomatic.com:80/
http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/
http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping?u={SITEURL}
As you can see the format of this text file is quite easy to understand. I will shortly explain the elements.
username=bill Please replace 'bill' with your username.
password=bill Please replace 'bill' with your password.
blogids=1,5,6 This element allows you to specify for which blogs you want to send pings. The numbers 1, 5 and 6 are blog ID. You can view a ID of a blog by starting up StarPinger, press the 'Blogs' button, select a blog and press the 'Change' button. At the right of label 'Blog ID' should be a number, this is the blog ID of the selected blog.
noproxy=0 If you set this element to 1 then no proxies will be used to ping.
fullstatus=0 StarPinger will only display a status message when a ping task finish if you specify 0. On the other hand if you specify 1 StarPinger will display every single status message.
# The line starting with a # is a comment.
http:// Lines starting with 'http://' are the urls of the services you wish to ping. Please startup StarPinger and press the 'Services' button, select a service and press the 'Change' button. The url of a ping service is in the 'Url' field.
If a ping service doesn't accept a normal XML-RPC ping but required a GET with the blog url please use the following format:
http://url.of.service.com/{SITEURL}
StarPinger will replace {SITEURL} with the url of the blog.

How can i run StarPinger in batch mode?

Please start up your command prompt and go to the directory where you installed StarPinger. Be sure that you have made the text file and saved it into the directory where StarPinger is installed. Now type in the following:
java -jar ping.jar "textfile.txt"
(please replace 'textfile.txt' with the name of your text file)

Things you need to know