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If I deactivate or remove the plugin, what happens to my trackback comments?

Trackback comments are real comments, inserted into the WP comments database. The plugin creates the comments, but after that, they exist on their own. Deactivating or removing the plugin will have no effect on them.

If you want to remove the plugin and all the trackback comments, you should start by using the "Delete Trackback Comments" button. This will delete all the trackback comments that were created by the plugin (and leave other comments and trackbacks untouched). In the yellow message box at the top of the next page, click the "deactivate this plugin" link, and then you can delete the plugin.

When someone links to a post of mine, how quickly will the trackback comment appear?

It will appear the next time someone tries to load the post page. As the page loads, the Topsy plugin checks to see if there are any new links to the page, and adds comments if there are.

However, if you're allowing search engines to index your blog, then the search engine's hits will also trigger the plugin, so it's entirely possible that search engines will keep your trackback comments up-to-date without any human intervention.

I deleted one of the trackback comments, but it keeps coming back. Help!

If the plugin is still activated, it will re-generate trackback comments every time a blog post page is loaded.

If you want to keep the plugin activated, and block one or two comments from reappearing, you can use the "Unapprove" feature in the WordPress dashboard. An Unapproved comment will not be visible on your blog's pages.

My trackback comments don't show up. I just see the author's name, which is a hyperlink to the original tweet... but the tweet text doesn't show up on my blog.

Some WordPress themes omit the text of trackbacks. The theme you're using is apparently one of them. You can get full texts in your trackback comments by having the plugin create them as comments, rather than as trackbacks. Look for the "Comment Display Style" option on the Topsy Widgets plugin's Settings page.

After changing the setting for comments, you can get rid of existing blank trackbacks with the "Delete Trackback Comments" button. when the plugin regenerates them, it will build them as comments instead.

I used one of the 0.9.x releases, and have trackback comments in old styles (with "Original tweet" and "Topsy page" links). How can I make my old comments like the new ones?

Just use the new "Delete Trackback Comments" button. Since the plugin will automatically regenerate comments if it's still active, the delete button will clean up the old comments and let new ones be created in the new style.

How can I get rid of the duplicate trackback comments littering my blog?

Again, just use the "Delete Trackback Comments" button. All the duplicate comments will go away, and then the correct ones will be regenerated over the next day or so. Alternatively, if you delete duplicate comments manually, the incorrect ones will not reappear - that bug has been resolved, and will not reoccur.

I get a fatal error when I try to activate the plugin.

If you get an error message like:

Plugin could not be activated because it triggered a fatal error.
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected '{' in
/.../wp-content/plugins/topsy/topsy.php on line 195

it means you're using a version of PHP older than 5.0. The line that triggers the fatal error uses the PHP5 "exceptions" feature (also known as "try/catch/throw"). This is a feature that PHP4 doesn't have, so it can't figure out what to do.

The PHP development team announced the end of support for PHP4 on July 13, 2007. Since even the PHP team has not supported PHP4 for over two years, we have no plans to add support for PHP4 in our plugin. You should contact your web hosting provider or system administrator to see about getting your server upgraded to PHP5.