A lot of people who run WordPress on a day to day basis may find this interesting, as a lot of those people don’t know about the Update Services, or how to configure them properly. You find them in Settings -> Writing, right at the bottom of the page (for WordPress 2.5); and, Options -> Writing, right at the bottom of the page (for < WordPress 2.5)

So what are they? Here is what the WordPress Codex says:

Update Services are tools you can use to let other people know you’ve updated your blog. WordPress automatically notifies popular Update Services that you’ve updated your blog by sending a XML-RPC ping each time you create or update a post. In turn, Update Services process the ping and updates their proprietary indices with your update. Now people browsing sites like Technorati or Sphere can find your most recent posts!

There are a lot of URLs to use and there is a lot of variation in the importance of each. The Codex lists these:

http://api.feedster.com/ping
http://api.moreover.com/ping
http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping
http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2
http://ping.amagle.com/
http://ping.bitacoras.com
http://ping.blo.gs/
http://ping.feedburner.com
http://ping.rootblog.com/rpc.php
http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php
http://rcs.datashed.net/RPC2/
http://rpc.blogbuzzmachine.com/RPC2
http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/
http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/
http://rpc.newsgator.com/
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
http://topicexchange.com/RPC2
http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2
http://www.blogoole.com/ping/
http://www.blogoon.net/ping/
http://www.blogsnow.com/ping
http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi
http://www.lasermemory.com/lsrpc/
http://www.newsisfree.com/RPCCloud
http://www.popdex.com/addsite.php
http://www.snipsnap.org/RPC2
http://www.wasalive.com/ping/
http://www.weblogues.com/RPC/

That’s quite a few URLs to add to your Update Services list! Be careful of adding new ones of course, in case they ping already existing URLs, which may cause sites to consider you to be ping spamming.

Elliot Back has a good list of URLs, which is longer than the list above, giving a list of 56 RPC and RPC2 services. Ensight’s list is a little shorter (43) but again is regularly maintained.

If you’re really interested in doing it manually, you should try Pingomatic.