Welcome webloggers! You can "ping" A2B and alert us every time you
update your weblog - this means that your weblog will go to the top of
our latest sites page. There will soon
be a range of other associated features available as well. Here's what
you need in order to ping us successfully:
1. Position
Meta Tags
The HTML code of your weblog needs to have special "META" tags which
specify the geographical position of the content, and are included in
the <HEAD> section at the beginning of an HTML document. Usually, your weblog service or software
has a configuration option for entering your latitude and longitude,
and will automatically produce the correct meta tags. If your weblog
doesn't have one of these meta tags, it can't be automatically included
in A2B. There are two main types of positioning META tags:
GeoURL-style
ICBM Meta Tags
Named after InterContinental Ballistic Missiles, which would be loaded
with the exact latitude and longitude of their target before being
launched and speeding through sub-orbital space on their way to
annihilate their destination, ICBM META tags look like this:
<meta name="ICBM"
content="44.345,-93.712">
The first part of the content
is the decimal latitude (negative values for positions South of the
Equator), and the second part, after the comma, is decimal longitude
(negative for positions West of the Greenwich Meridian).
Geotag Meta Tags
Geotag META tags follow exactly the same principle as ICBMs, and look
like this:
<meta
name="geo.position" content="44.345;-93.712">
If you don't know your latitude and longitude, find it out.
2. Title
The HTML of your weblog also
needs to contain either a <title> element, or else a
"DC.title" meta tag, looking like this:
<meta name="DC.title" content="Steve's Fascinating Weblog">
3. Weblog Ping URL
To be able to ping A2B, you
have to be able to enter the A2B ping URL and have the weblog software
or service ping A2B, using something called the XML-RPC protocol, when
you add an entry. Most weblog
software or services have a space where you can enter ping URLs.
The URL of A2B's ping service is:
http://www.a2b.cc/setloc/bp.a2b
Instead of entering multiple ping URLs, you can also just ping Pingomatic and they will pass
your ping on to A2B.
Once you're done, you can check out to see if your weblog was added on
the latest sites page. Plus don't
forget you can add any site to A2B, not just weblogs, as long as the
site is linked to a place with a latitude and longitude.
Good luck with your pinging! Don't forget to post to the support forum if you run into trouble.
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