What is the use of to_ping and pinged column?

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Can anyone explain or show a reference for the use of to_ping and pinged column in the wp_posts table? It seems that my Googling skills have failed me.

I wanted to do an experiment using the pinged column to save the term_id of a term that is related to this post record.

I know that the proper way is to use custom field instead, but I wanted to reduce the mysql inner join in the WP_Query calls.

Thank you in advance.

1

  • to_ping is a list of URLs WordPress should send pingbacks to.
  • pinged is a list of URLs WordPress has sent pingbacks to.

Do not use these fields for something else. They are parsed many times in core code (69 matches for to_ping); their format is fixed.

You cannot reduce the query load by using these fields, because all post meta fields are fetched in one rush per post. So it doesn’t matter if there is one more or less.

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