No, I’m not taking a time out from my blog (sorry, Fred).

This is about your blog timing out when you’re trying to make a post, or at the very least — having to waaaaiiiitttt forever after you click the “Publish” button for your post to actually do just that – publish.

Doesn’t matter if you’re using WordPress, Moveable Type – or any other blogging platform that allows you to ping services when you make a new post.

Those ping services can be GREAT! Your blog gets annotated on many lists (like blogrolling.com) – so that the WHOLE world knows that you have updated your blog with all your wit and wisdom!

However, it can have it’s downside, too. For instance – say your blog is set up to notify 10 different services that you’ve updated your blog. Your blog contacts those 10 servers while you’re updating…to let them know. If those 10 servers are responsive – - then GREAT – you’re done. If even ONE of those servers is having a bad server day (or worse, if it’s down completely) then your blog is going to get hung up while attempting to ping that particular service…. it can take forever.

In addition – - if one of those ping services is down – -your blog will keep trying and trying (during your publishing process) to contact that server… until it times out. If it times out on, say, the second ping service on the list – - then the other ping services that you have listed won’t get update. In addition – if your blog times out when trying to send a ping to one of those services… and you have a bunch of trackbacks that you want your post to send out to other bloggers? Chances are – your trackbacks won’t get sent, because your blog has timed out trying to contact the ping services that you have specified in your blog configuration settings.

The complete solution?

Don’t ping anyone.

But! But! No one will KNOW that I’ve updated!!!

So, then ping – - but understand that those ping services are third party servers. The success in your blog showing as updated… the success of your blog not timing out during the publishing process… could very well be dependent upon how responsive those ping services servers are to your feedback.

A few rules of thumb:

If you blog loads fine, otherwise – but times out during the publishing process: More often than not, it’s not the fault of your hosting company. Take a look at the list of ping services you have configured.

If the trackbacks you sent out this morning went out just fine – - but the ones you sent out this afternoon didn’t make it? Take a look at the list of ping services you have configured… Most blog platforms will send pings to the ping services first.. then ping the sites you’ve trackbacked last… if the ping services have timed out – - chances are, the trackbacks you’ve sent won’t make it through.

If it’s a persistent problem that you can’t live with out? Consider removing all ping services from your configuration – - then manually pinging these services using something like Ping-O-Matic to update those services that your blog has been updated with all of it’s bloggy goodness.

Recently, I had a client who was positive that it was our servers fault that their blog was timing out during the publishing process. When I went in to their configuration and took a look – - the client had this entire list of ping services configured to ping when he published. When those services were removed – - his publishing process took all of seconds to complete.

Please troubleshoot before coming after your web host with a sledge hammer!