pfblogs.org speaks

DreamHost hosts the pfblogs.org web server and database. I’ve been a customer of theirs since 2001, and the last two years or so have been rough. We’re sticking with them for now, but the fetching software will not run. The RSS parser seems to use significant CPU power, and Dreamhost kills any process that uses more than the average CPU load.

For this reason, the fetching process is now performed on a grid server hosted with MediaTemple. Their support has been very helpful, but they automatically kill tasks that last more than 15 minutes — even shell tasks. Thanks to the growth in the number of blogs, the fetching process is now split to last under 15 minutes each time.

Four times an hour, for about 8 minutes each time, half of all blogs in the database are fetched. This has been working very well for the last twenty-four hours or so. This way, each blog is fetched twice an hour. This is above and beyond the pings allowed for the Friends of pfblogs.org, which are still being performed by the DreamHost server.

Now that we have more stability, we’re working on a new feature: free hosted blogs, powered by WordPress, for anyone who wants to start a personal finance blog. Blogs hosted on the new service can join the Friends of pfblogs.org at a discount, but must stay somewhat active. The service is being tested as I write this, and we hope to release it to the public within the next few weeks.

I sent out the first email to those who expressed interest in the pfblogs.org Advisory Panel. We could still use a few more voices, so if you’re interested (and you’ve been involved with the personal finance blogging community for a while), send an email to webmaster at this domain.

Update: Thanks to everyone who responded! The Advisory Panel team is now in place.

I’d like to focus on expanding the real estate and investing sections of pfblogs.org during the month of November. The real estate section can include blogs about the housing bubble, Realtors’ blogs, real estate investing, purchasing a home, etc.. In the investing section, we will include blogs about the stock market, other investments, trading, commodities, brokers’ blogs, etc.

Don’t hesitate to add a blog to the massive aggregator!

Speaking of the aggregator, we are now dually hosted, with one shared server at Dreamhost which serves the website to visitors, maintains the database, deals with pings, and is the backup 30-minute fetcher. The other is a “grid server” at MediaTemple which functions as the main 30-minute fetcher. As we further test how the servers manage loads, responsibilities may move around.

This will hopefully be the final change to the “pinging” process for a while. When a blog pings pfblogs.org to let us know that there is an update to be fetched — a feature available only to Friends of pfblogs.org — there is a two minute delay. If the blogger who owns the pinging blog has registered with us a Feedburner feed, the delay is increased to ten minutes to allow Feedburner time to fetch the new entry. It is strongly suggested that the blogging software be set up to ping Feedburner as well as pfblogs.org.

Feedburner may still not fetch your newest entries within ten minutes. If this is something that happens often and you’d like the behavior to change, allow pfblogs.org to fetch your local RSS feed rather than the one hosted by Feedburner. This may take some extra work depending on your configuration.

A change to the pinging programming is causing a problem, and I won’t be able to fix it until this evening. Until then, pinging is disabled. Feeds will still be fetched on the regular schedule.

Update: Pinging service has returned, including the 5 minute delay for those using Feedburner. Please make sure you are also pinging Feedburner’s server in your notification configuration.

As you may know, Friends of pfblogs.org have the option of pinging the pfblogs.org server to let the site know when a new entry has been posted. However, when a blogger uses Feedburner, the RSS feed doesn’t always contain the new post before it is fetched by pfblogs.org.

Therefore, for those Friends who use Feedburner and ping pfblogs.org, the server will wait 5 minutes before fetching the RSS feed. If the blog also pings Feedburner, this should be sufficient. To avoid this 5 minute delay, contact us with the non-Feedburner address for your RSS feed. If you are using a redirection for local RSS requests, pfblogs.org servers should be excluded from the directive.

If you have not become a member of the Friends of pfblogs.org yet and you’ve been meaning too, don’t forget that the monthly price will be raising for non-commercial members on November 1. The link to your blog itself is worth $110 to $145 according to LinkWorth, and non-commercial Friends get the link plus a lot more for only $4.99 a month.

Commercial members of the Friends of pfblogs.org pay $50 a month, still much less than the state value of just the link.

If you join before November 1, you will have the lower price for the life of your membership. To join the Friends of pfblogs.org, read this information.

Thanks to everyone who informed me of their interest in the pfblogs.org Advisory Panel. I’ll be contacting a bunch of you in the next few weeks to send you more information and get things started.

There’s now a simpler way to request listing on pfblogs.org. It’s as simple as filling out a form. The blog will still have to be reviewed of course. There are new personal finance blogs popping up every day. I’ve refined the “guidelines” of what we’re looking for… it seems like most people are trying to make a quick buck rather than developing content first. I’m not a fan.

I’m looking for a few good (and historied) bloggers to join the pfblogs.org Advisory Panel. Email the webmaster at this domain if you’re interested, and I’ll pass along more information regarding the plans for the Panel.

Out of curiosity, I logged into LinkWorth to see how much a link on every page within pfblogs.org would go for. Take a look at the results and see for yourself: (more…)

This should be a welcome update for those who like to see their blog entries make their way to pfblogs.org faster than the normal 30 minute fetching cycle. If your blog software supports it, you can now ping pfblogs.org’s server to fetch your feed.

• Get your numerical blog ID by finding your blog on the sidebar on pfblogs.org or through the full blog listing.
• Configure your blogging software to ping http://pfblogs.org/ping/BlogID where BlogID is your numerical blog ID.
• Post as you normally would (please, no “test posts”) and check pfblogs.org in the next minute or so. Your post should appear.

There are several reasons this might not work for you.

• You may not have correctly entered the ping URL, which should be, for example, http://pfblogs.org/ping/20. Replace “20″ with your blog’s numerical ID used by pfblogs.org.
• You may have your time zone configured incorrectly in your RSS feed or blogging software.
• Some feeds generated by Blogger are incorrectly formatted.
• You may have an invalid character in your feed.
• The server hosting your feed may be unavailable for a short amount of time.
• Your entry, or the summary in your RSS feed, is fewer than ten words long.
• If pfblogs.org uses your Feedburner feed, there is a delay between the time you post and the time when Feedburner updates your feed.

If you believe there is some issue other than the examples above, email the webmaster who will have debugging information for all pings that hit the pfblogs.org server.

Note: This feature is available only to Friends of pfblogs.org and only one ping for a particular blog will be processed every 30 minutes. If you use Feedburner and pfblogs.org uses your Feedburner feed rather than your local feed, your ping may not be effective, due to the delay between the time you post and Feedburner’s update.

Sorry if pfblogs.org seems a little sluggish today. The server seems to be handling some database queries slower than usual. Hopefully the problem will take care of itself.

A splog is a blog consisting of spam. It’s often hard to tell splogs from true blogs, but splogs will not be listed on pfblogs.org and any subscriptions for membership in the Friends of pfblogs.org initiated by owners of splogs will be refunded. Pfblogs.org exists to serve as a useful tool for the personal finance, investing, and real estate blogging community.

The inclusion of spam blogs reduces the quality of pfblogs.org.

On October 1, the price of Commercial Membership in the Friends of pfblogs.org will increase. The price for those bloggers whose blogs implicitly or explicity promote a product or products will see the monthly price increase from $35 to $50. Current Commercial and Non-Commercial Friends will not see this price increase. You still have the rest of August and all of September to subscribe as a Friend of pfblogs.org for $35 for your lifetime.

Note: this change only affects Commercial Memberships. On October 1, Non-Commercial Memberships will still be only $2.00 each month.

If you happen to come across a blog listed on pfblogs.org that is inappropriate for listing based on the guidelines listed in the FAQ (spam, not personal finance, etc.), please let us know privately. With almost 600 blogs included and more than one third of those posting new entries regularly, it’s a little difficult to keep track of the legitimacy of the entire group.

And listen: It’s currently $2 a month ($35 a month for “commercial” sites) to become a member of the Friends of pfblogs.org, which provides some neat features (and more to come soon!) for bloggers who are serious about promoting their blog. All current Friends are locked into this price, but the cost of membership will be going up in the future.