Backlink Index Express - Part II, Common Issues
Posted 02-02-2011 at 04:02 PM by cringwall
Part 2 Of A Series
BIE has been very successful on a variety of platforms, but I have noticed that there are some common issues that many users encounter, so I’m going to go over some of them in this post.
Issue 1: The Ping.fm Method Of Posting Is Dead
The original BIE used Ping.fm and then later Posterous to post it’s content to various Web 2.0 blogs. That method is dead. It does not work anymore – but users keep trying (the code is backward-compatible, in case some users may actually have a working Ping.fm setup).
The fact is, the new method of posting with BIE – using your OWN network of WordPress blogs – actually works better than the Web 2.0 method – and it’s way more reliable than the old way.
Issue 2: Content Feeds
By far, the most support issues I get with BIE are because user do not put ENOUGH Ezine Article Feeds in their contentfeeds.txt file. You need at LEAST 5 – it’s better to put 10. Why? Well, BIE will only use a content item ONE time, and if you are posting frequently, BIE ‘runs out’ of RSS items – causing the ‘Time Out On Content Items’ error.
The other common problem is that uses try to use other feeds besides the Ezine Article Feeds – some will work, most won’t. Ezine Article feeds are perfect, because they are constantly updated, come in a variety of niches and most of all the WORK with BIE. I get lots of support requests saying BIE is not posting, and more than half the time, it is because users are not using enough feeds – or are trying to use feeds from CNN or Technorati instead of the EZA feeds.
Issue 3: Your Blogs Are Rejecting Posts
Some users are getting errors like: ‘Cannot Open Socket’ or ‘Connection Refused’ or ‘An error occurred – -32301:transport error – HTTP status code was not 200’ when running BIE. This is caused by the destination blogs not accepting the XML-RPC requests generated by BIE. First, you should check that XML-RPC is enabled on your indexer blogs.
If that does not solve the issue, it may be an issue with the blog itself. If the error continues, it may be that the web host hosting the blog has a firewall setting called mod_sec or mod_security installed. This will prevent posting via XML-RPC.
A couple of methods to troubleshoot: Download Windows Live Writer and try posting to the blog – if you get an error with this program as well, it’s likely a hosting issue. One other thing to try is to simply put a different blog in bloginfo.csv. If BIE can post to one blog, but not another, the issue is the blog, not BIE.
Issue 4: Cron Job Issues
Hostgator, for instance only allows cron every 15 minutes – I recommend you post with BIE every 10 minutes. One other common issue is that different webhosts have variations in how cron jobs are handled. For example, most web hosts have a cron command that looks like this:
/usr/bin/php /path_to_html/scriptfolder/indexexpress.php
or your path to PHP may be like this:
/usr/local/bin/php /path_to_html/scriptfolder/indexexpress.php
Some hosts handle file access differently under cron than when running a script via browser. The error you get with this condition is something like:
‘/path/scriptfolder/data/contentfeeds.txt does not exist ‘
This means that your host has a different ‘root’ location for cron vs. browser-run scripts. One alternative is to use different commands to run the cron job, like GET or wget instead of the commands listed above:
GET http://www.yourdomain.com/scriptfolder/indexexpress.php
or
/usr/bin/wget -O – -q -t 1 http://www.yourdomain.com/scriptfolder/indexexpress.php
These commands run the script the same way that your would in a browser. Another alternative is to simply hard-code the file paths in the script, like it shows in this KB Article.
To Sum Up
While it is a very effective method of indexing backlinks, BIE can be a challenge for some people. It’s a powerful tool and at times, admittedly, can be frustrating for new users. But once it’s set up and running, there is nothing better or more automated to get your backlinks indexed quickly.
BIE has been very successful on a variety of platforms, but I have noticed that there are some common issues that many users encounter, so I’m going to go over some of them in this post.
Issue 1: The Ping.fm Method Of Posting Is Dead
The original BIE used Ping.fm and then later Posterous to post it’s content to various Web 2.0 blogs. That method is dead. It does not work anymore – but users keep trying (the code is backward-compatible, in case some users may actually have a working Ping.fm setup).
The fact is, the new method of posting with BIE – using your OWN network of WordPress blogs – actually works better than the Web 2.0 method – and it’s way more reliable than the old way.
Issue 2: Content Feeds
By far, the most support issues I get with BIE are because user do not put ENOUGH Ezine Article Feeds in their contentfeeds.txt file. You need at LEAST 5 – it’s better to put 10. Why? Well, BIE will only use a content item ONE time, and if you are posting frequently, BIE ‘runs out’ of RSS items – causing the ‘Time Out On Content Items’ error.
The other common problem is that uses try to use other feeds besides the Ezine Article Feeds – some will work, most won’t. Ezine Article feeds are perfect, because they are constantly updated, come in a variety of niches and most of all the WORK with BIE. I get lots of support requests saying BIE is not posting, and more than half the time, it is because users are not using enough feeds – or are trying to use feeds from CNN or Technorati instead of the EZA feeds.
Issue 3: Your Blogs Are Rejecting Posts
Some users are getting errors like: ‘Cannot Open Socket’ or ‘Connection Refused’ or ‘An error occurred – -32301:transport error – HTTP status code was not 200’ when running BIE. This is caused by the destination blogs not accepting the XML-RPC requests generated by BIE. First, you should check that XML-RPC is enabled on your indexer blogs.
If that does not solve the issue, it may be an issue with the blog itself. If the error continues, it may be that the web host hosting the blog has a firewall setting called mod_sec or mod_security installed. This will prevent posting via XML-RPC.
A couple of methods to troubleshoot: Download Windows Live Writer and try posting to the blog – if you get an error with this program as well, it’s likely a hosting issue. One other thing to try is to simply put a different blog in bloginfo.csv. If BIE can post to one blog, but not another, the issue is the blog, not BIE.
Issue 4: Cron Job Issues
Hostgator, for instance only allows cron every 15 minutes – I recommend you post with BIE every 10 minutes. One other common issue is that different webhosts have variations in how cron jobs are handled. For example, most web hosts have a cron command that looks like this:
/usr/bin/php /path_to_html/scriptfolder/indexexpress.php
or your path to PHP may be like this:
/usr/local/bin/php /path_to_html/scriptfolder/indexexpress.php
Some hosts handle file access differently under cron than when running a script via browser. The error you get with this condition is something like:
‘/path/scriptfolder/data/contentfeeds.txt does not exist ‘
This means that your host has a different ‘root’ location for cron vs. browser-run scripts. One alternative is to use different commands to run the cron job, like GET or wget instead of the commands listed above:
GET http://www.yourdomain.com/scriptfolder/indexexpress.php
or
/usr/bin/wget -O – -q -t 1 http://www.yourdomain.com/scriptfolder/indexexpress.php
These commands run the script the same way that your would in a browser. Another alternative is to simply hard-code the file paths in the script, like it shows in this KB Article.
To Sum Up
While it is a very effective method of indexing backlinks, BIE can be a challenge for some people. It’s a powerful tool and at times, admittedly, can be frustrating for new users. But once it’s set up and running, there is nothing better or more automated to get your backlinks indexed quickly.
Total Comments 0
