What's blogging and pinging all about? I am a total noob when it comes to blogging. A run down on what it's all about would be appreciated.
blogging is like journaling, or having a site in which you post about (topic of choice) as often as you like. Pinging is what you do to announce to various blog-related sites that your blog has been updated. There are tools that will ping for you. Depending on which blogging software you use, sometimes the ping is automatic or sometimes you have to get a plugin to ping. Pinging is great because it helps get your blog noticed a lot faster.
In other words,when you update your blog (write a new post,update the old posts) ,wordpress send a message to other search engines and let them know you've done some updates on your blog .Then you get more visitors/readers. This document will help you Yes,it is.You could choose what search engines to ping.You could edit the ping list here: Log into your wordpress--->Opinion--->Writing Find the 'Update Services' section and you could edit it now