How to Make the best out of BlogNPing Software

Welcome! This brief document explains how you can make the best out of this BlogNPing software. If you are stuck at finding out how to perform a certain thing, this is the kit for you!

In this kit:
How can I install the BlogNPing software?
Whats CRON? What does it have to me?
A walk-through guide of how to use this software
How can I spider a website for urls?
How can I post a spidered website's content to my blog?
How can I view the progress of my spidering/posting request?
HELP! How can I cancel a posting to my blog?
I don't like the way this software looks like, how do I change it?


A Walk through guide!

Lets say you are selling products for helping out affiliates with their marketing.You find out a website which has some great articles which would be of interest to your target audience (which is affiliates). So how do you post all those articles to your blog, instantly?

EASY! Just follow this 2 step process!

Step 1: Spidering the website

This is easy. All you have to do is to give the script the URL of the website which has the articles, and hit the "Spider it!" button.

1- Start up the script by typing its URL in Internet Explorer/Firefox. E.g if its installed at www.your-website.com/blognping/ then just type that in your web browser and press enter!
2- Click at the "Spider Links" link at the top.
3- Type a title for this spidering session, for example, you can call it "Affiliate Articles Spidering".
4- Type the website address of the site with the articles. If the articles are on a particular page at the website, for example, the website is "www.affiliate-articles.com" and the articles are at "www.affiliate-articles.com/articles/" then just type the direct link to the articles page.
5- Choose how you want to handle this spidering. If you click the button saying "Try to handle it right away", the script will try to run another script. To translate that in english, the script will try to use a method which isn't allowed on some web hosts. So you are better off clicking the second button, "Try to use Cron". If you don't know what Cron is, see What is CRON? And what does it have to do with me?
6- Hit the spider it! button. Thats it. The script will now try to spider the website right away, or do it in the next 24 hours if you are using Cron.
7- If you want to check the status of the spidering, click at the "My Jobs"link at the top of any page in the script.

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Step 2: Posting the results to my blog!

There are two ways to handle this:

(a) Post the results right after the spidering:
1- Open the Spider Links Page
2- After providing a url and title, scroll down and click at the checkbox saying "YES! Use this information to make a post in my blog!".
3- Type in your blog's information, such as blog id, username, etc. You can fill this info in your profile page so you don't have to type it all over again each time.
4- Thats it! Click at the Spider or Blog buttons, and you are ready to go!

But how can i check if the posts have been made or not?

To check the status of your spidering/blogging job, just click at the "My Jobs" link in the top right cornet of any page in the script.

(b) Post the results later:
If you prefer to spider the url first, and post the results at another time, then spider a website, but don't click the checkbox saying 'Yes! I want to use the information below to make posts in my blog'. Instead, just get the website spidered. After it has been spidered.......
1- Click at "Make Posts" link at the top.
2- Type the keywords you want to use as 'titles' in the blog post.
3- Type all of your blog's info. If you are smart, you can use the 'Profile' page to store all of your blog's info in the database, so you don't have to type it all over again each time.
NOTE: If you are using
Cron to handle the posting, your blog's info will be automatically saved in the profile.
4- Click the 'Blog me!' button!

Thats it! To check the status of your request, check the 'My Jobs' link.
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How can I install the BlogNPing software?

Installing is as easy as 123! All you have to do is:
1- Upload all of the script's files to a directory on your website.
2- Chmod the file "config.php" in the directory to 777. If you don't know what it means, or don't know how to do that, no problem! Read on for more info on how to install without chmoding the file.
3- Now, type the path to the script in your web browser.
4- You would be taken to a page which asks a bunch of stuff about your website, such as mysql username, database name, etc. If you don't know what that stuff means, just email your web host asking them your mysql host name, database name, username, and password. When they reply, just copy and paste what they gave you in this page.
5- Click the Install/Submit button.
6- Now, if you had chmoded the file "config.php" you will see a message saying something like "You have successfully installed the script!". If not, you will get a text box containing a bunch of gibberish (php code!!). What you need to do with the gibberish is:
(a)- Copy and paste it into the file 'config.php'.
(b)- Upload the file 'config.php' to your website.
Do that, and you'll do just fine!

After the installation...........

After the installation completed, you need to either put the script 'exec.php' on Cron and set it up to run once in 24 hours, or, you can try to run the script without setting it on CRON. If you don't set it on Cron, the script will try to do a bunch of stuff which isn't allowed on most web hosts. Soooo, if you try to spider a link/ post spidered content to your blog, and it doesn't work, then the solution is most probably just putting the script 'exec.php' on Cron. If you don't have any idea of what the hell Cron is, check What is Cron?? And what does it have to do with me?

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What is CRON?? And what does it have to do with me??

Cron is simply a way of running a script at a specified date and time. In order to use this BlogNPing software, you might have to put the script 'exec.php' on CRON, so it runs at least once every 24 hours.
Whenever the script runs, it:
1- Spiders all urls you specified in the last 24 hours.
2- Makes all of the blog posts you specified in the last 24 hours.
3- Handles ALL jobs in the database where the status is not 'Completed'.
If you don't know how to set up Cron, you can always get help from your web host!

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How can I view the progress of my requests?

Just click at the 'My Jobs' link at the top. This will display a list of all of your requests, as well as their status and links spidered, and lots of other useful info!

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HELP! How can I cancel a posting to my blog?

If you are like me, there will be often times when you accidently start a posting/spidering when you shouldn't have. So whats the fastest, quickest, way to cancel that?
Well, there are a few......

Change its status:
This might prove the quickest way out. If the script 'exec.php' is set to run at CRON, or if you have more than one pending requests to be handled, then just go to 'My Jobs' page, and change the status of the job you wish to cancel to 'completed'.

Delete the job:
Just go to 'My Jobs' page and hit the 'Delete' link next to the job you wish to delete. Clicking this link will permanently delete the job, as well as all content stored in the database by spidering. You will have to re-spider the url again if you want to use it.

Change your blog's password: If you have no other way, or you just want to be on the safe side, you can change your password at blogger.com (not at your profile in BlogNPing, as this most probably wouldn't make a difference). That way, the posts wouldn't be made since a wrong password would be supplied by BlogNPing.

There is no gaurantee that these will work. They can be used to minimize the posts made however. The only way to absolutely cancel the posts is to not make the request in the first place!

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I don't like the way this software looks like, how do I change it?

Yep, you can easily change the entire look and feel of the software. To do that, you just change the html files located inside the "html" folder. For your convenience, below is a list of all the files in the HTML folder, as well as what they do.
What to do:

What NOT to do:

List of HTML files, and what they do:
NOTE: this list is in alphabetical order of the file names.
File Name/Path: Purpose:
footer.html This file is displayed at the end of all pages on the site. Great for adding a copyright notice!
header.html Same as footer.html, except its called on top of all other pages.Displays all of the main navigation links. What better place to add your site's logo or header graphic!
home.html Displayed whenever someone goes to www.yoursite.com/BlogNPing/ or www.yoursite.com/BlogNPing/index.php
jobs.html Used for displaying all the jobs at jobs.php.
post_form.html Displayed whenever someone clicks the "Make Posts" link in the top navigation bar.
profile.html Form displayed whenever someone clicks the 'Your Profile' link.
setup_error.html If a config.php file couldn't be created during the set up, this file displays an error message, and also a text box containing some PHP code which can be copied and pasted into the config.php file.
setup_form.html This is the main form displayed during the installation process.
setup_success.html If the installation was successful, this file is displayed.
spider_cron.html If someone clicks at the 'Spider links' link, and doesn't choose the option 'Try to handle it right away' then this page is displayed.
spider_form.html Main form displayed whenever someone clicks the 'Spider links' link.
spider_form_edit.html If someone clicks the 'Edit' link next to any job in the 'My Jobs' page, this form is displayed.
spider_processing.html If someone clicks the 'Try to handle it right away' option on a 'Spider links' form, this page is displayed.

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