After alot of testing and trying to track the issue down, it eventually turned out to be due to a wordpress plugin that I installed a while back to do syntax highlighting called WP-dp.SyntaxHighlighter. It did the trick with the syntax highlighting for code snippets but it totally messed up my rss feed. In order to fix the feed I deactivated the plugin and began the search for a similar plugin which wouldn’t mess up the rss feed. I have just installed the WP-Syntax plugin as a replacement code syntax highlighter plugin and it works a treat without breaking my rss feed.

using System; 

public class ReverseArraySort
{
   public static void Main()
   {
      string[] strings = {"beta", "alpha", "gamma"};
      Console.WriteLine ("Array elements: ");
      DisplayArray  (strings);
      Array.Sort    (strings); // Sort elements
      DisplayArray  (strings);
   }

   public static void DisplayArray (Array array)
   {
      foreach (object o in array)
      {
         Console.Write ("{0} ", o);
      }
      Console.WriteLine();
   }
}

I googled for it and I came across this little show video tutorial of how to set up a cronjob using cpanel

In fact after hunting around a bit I found many more cpanel video tutorials on the same site.

If you have this issue with the blank post.php page when posting then the issue is most likely some one of the sites in your ping list is timing out.

Alot of people say that by simply removing http://rpc.pingomatic.com from the list it should work but this did not work for me. I had to go through alot of the ping list to eliminate which ones were causing issues.

Here is my current ping list and with this ping list I do not have the blank post.php issue. Hope this helps someone else.

http://api.feedster.com/ping

http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2

http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping

http://www.irishblogs.ie/xmlrpc.php

http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2

http://planet.journals.ie/xml-rpc.php

http://ping.blo.gs/

http://ping.feedburner.com

http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping

http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2

http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping

http://api.moreover.com/ping

http://www.blogsnow.com/ping

http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi

http://coreblog.org/ping/

http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php

http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php

http://www.a2b.cc/setloc/bp.a2b

http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2

http://www.blogshares.com/rpc.php

Well, I recently upgraded my blogs to WordPress 2.0.4 and I stopped getting the automated emails.  The WP Database Backup plugin comes pre-installed with version 2.0.4 of Wordpress and my WP Cron plugin was left untouched.  I checked the versions of my old WP Database Backup plugin against the new version and they both were 1.7, so I initially thought that the WP Cron plugin was the issue.

I eventually debugged it down to the fact that the two WP Database Backup plugins (old and new) were different even though they both stated version 1.7.   So I overwrote the newer WP Database Backup plugin with my old backup copy of the WP Database Backup plugin and the emails started to arrive again with the blog backups attached.

The versions that work for me with Wordpress 2.0.4 are:

WP Cron

WP Database Backup

So I had to use the older version of the WP Database Backup plugin (not the version shipped with WP 2.0.4).  Disappointing that two different versions of the WP Database Backup plugin were both labelled version 1.7.

Well the main disadvantage I find is that they both are Windows applications (offline tools).  RSS Bandit has a synchronisation feature so that when I installed it in many locations I could use my ftp space to store synchronisation information.  Still, though what I was really after is some online solution where I only need a web browser to run my blogs.

 In the last few weeks I have been using Google Reader http://reader.google.com.  Google have updated it recently and I must say that I am very impressed.  Ok, so this solved my reading online but what about posting to blogs.  Currently I am using the Firefox Performancing plugin  http://performancing.com/firefox to post to some of my blogs.  Strictly speaking the plugin is still installed locally on my pc but at least it allows to read and post all from within my browser.

I am still on the look out for the ultimate solution, whereby I could read/blog from any internet enabled computer in the world without having to install any tools.

What tools do you use now for blogging ? 

Share some of your suggestions here