Soon after loading up WordPress 1.5 with my new list of ping destinations, I noticed a real slowdown after posting. Of course, pinging 30-50 places would slow things down, but it was a surprise.

Where the surprise grew was when I posted to the future (future post date, so it appears later on). Still the delay, which didn’t make sense – after all, wouldn’t it ping when it first appeared (possibly days from now)?

Going through the source code showed me it didn’t – in fact, WordPress appears to ping on posting – any posting – and only then.

Now this is a tempest in a teacup, since most bloggers write and post in the present. Worrying about the future is a waste – they write now, right now.

But for ‘niche’ people (those using blogs for business), the loss of that future ping was pretty serious – if they posted 30 articles for the month on the 1st, one for each day, they’d send out 30 pings on the 1st, and nothing for the rest of the month – and the pings are very important for traffic.

I eventually found a reference on WordPress support confirming this, but by then I had already created my own plugin ‘AutoPost’. Simple to use, it ages draft articles, and posts them when they’re due (and pinging on time, of course). You can optionally get emailed as well. The end result is I can load up, and post/ping on time.

Because it’s primarily for business, I’ve decided to offer it for sale. More on that later (or email if you’re curious)…