**UPDATE**
MSN has been replaced by Bing in the latest version:
New in Version 3.1.3 (2009-06-07):
* Changed MSN Live Search to Bing
* Exclude categories also now exludes the category itself and not only the posts
* Pings now use the new WordPress HTTP API instead of Snoopy
* Fixed bug that in localized WP installations priorities could not be saved
* The sitemap cron job is now cleared after a manual rebuild or after changing the config
* Adjusted style of admin area for WP 2.8 and refreshed icons
* Disabled the “Exclude categories” feature for WP 2.5.1, since it doesn’t have the required functions yet
Like many WP users, I have Google XML Sitemaps installed to automatically generate new sitemaps and ping major search engines after every new post. I wanted to add Bing to the list so i dug around the code a bit and figured out that Bing’s sitemap ping service is almost exactly the same as MSN’s. It doesn’t take much to get Bing added to the list of search engines:
sitemap-core.php:382
var $_usedBing = false;
var $_bingUrl = '';
var $_bingSuccess = false;
var $_bingStartTime = 0;
var $_bingEndTime = 0;
function StartBingPing($url) {
$this->_usedBing = true;
$this->_bingUrl = $url;
$this->_bingStartTime = $this->GetMicrotimeFloat();
$this->Save();
}
function EndBingPing($success) {
$this->_bingEndTime = $this->GetMicrotimeFloat();
$this->_bingSuccess = $success;
$this->Save();
}
function GetBingTime() {
return round($this->_bingEndTime - $this->_bingStartTime,2);
}sitemap-core.php:1047
$this->_options["sm_b_pingbing"]=true; //Auto ping Bing
sitemap-core.php:2254
//Ping Bing
if($this->GetOption("b_pingbing") && !empty($pingUrl)) {
$sPingUrl="http://www.bing.com/webmaster/ping.aspx?siteMap=" . urlencode($pingUrl);
$status->StartBingPing($sPingUrl);
$pingres=$this->RemoteOpen($sPingUrl);
if($pingres==NULL || $pingres===false || strpos($pingres,"Thanks for submitting your sitemap")===false) {
$status->EndBingPing(false,$this->_lastError);
} else {
$status->EndBingPing(true);
}
}sitemap-ui.php:650
if($status->_usedBing) {
if($status->_bingSuccess) {
echo "<li>" .__("BING was <b>successfully notified</b> about changes.",'sitemap'). "</li>";
$at = $status->GetBingTime();
if($at>4) {
echo "<li class=\sm_optimize\">" . str_replace("%time%",$at,__("It took %time% seconds to notify BING.com, maybe you want to disable this feature to reduce the building time.",'sitemap')) . "</li>";
}
} else {
echo "<li class=\"sm_error\">" . str_replace("%s",$status->_bingUrl,__('There was a problem while notifying BING.com. View result','sitemap')) . "</li>";
}
}sitemap-ui.php:767
<li>
<input type="checkbox" id="sm_b_pingbing" name="sm_b_pingbing" <?php echo ($this-/>sg->GetOption("b_pingbing")==true?"checked=\"checked\"":"") ?> />
<label for="sm_b_pingbing">< ?php _e('Notify BING about updates of your Blog', 'sitemap') ?></label><br />
<small>< ?php echo str_replace("%s",$this->sg->GetRedirectLink('sitemap-lwt'),__('No registration required, but you can join the BING Webmaster Tools to check crawling statistics.','sitemap')); ?></small>
</li>After you’ve modified the files, check go to your admin section > Settings > XML-Sitemap and regenerate your sitemap manually. You should see “BING was successfully notified about changes.” right under the MSN entry. Way to go!
