Trackback 101

  • ronchicago

    (@ronchicago)


    18 years, 11 months ago

    Trying to use trackback feature but not sure what is going on.

    I have two wordpress sites, site A, site B.

    1) I copied a quote from site A

    2) I wrote a brief post in site B and pasted the quote. In this new post I also put the exact url of the site A quote in the trackback menu.

    My questions are:

    3) Site A is now going to know that I used the quote in site B. right?

    4) If right, how is site A notified? Admin email? A comment ?
    5) Am I doing it right?

    After ten minutes I have visited site A post and admin email. Nothing.

    Thoughts.

Viewing 12 replies - 1 through 12 (of 12 total)
  • Chris_K

    (@handysolo)

    18 years, 11 months ago

    Item 2: If exact url = url to the POST, you’re on the write track.

    3) assuming site B sends the trackback and site A doesn’t can it as spam 😉

    4) Magic! See the definition of Trackback (Pingback is right below it on the same page).

    5) seem to be.

    Thread Starter ronchicago

    (@ronchicago)

    18 years, 11 months ago

    good! thanks for the link to trackback! but…

    so let’s be sure:

    item 2: here is the exact url = http://www.domain.com/blog/?p=54

    but…

    i don’t see anything in the comment section (p=54) of site A where the original quote was “quoted in site B

    so…

    that means something is not working?

    Chris_K

    (@handysolo)

    18 years, 11 months ago

    Assuming it didn’t get eaten along the way, it should look like a comment on the http://www.domain.com/blog/?p=54 post.

    If running any antispam plugins (akismet, spam karma 2 for instance) check their respective moderation queues.

    Check web error logs, some hosts snarf ’em.

    There’s a “known good” testing blog that you can experiment with at http://www.tamba2.org.uk/wordpress/TestTrack/index.php (read the various right-column bits for login and other info).

    Thread Starter ronchicago

    (@ronchicago)

    18 years, 11 months ago

    i went to tamba site. did not know exactly what to do with it. there is a login. there is no registration option. do i login in my sites login info?

    i sent tamba an email with question about this last night but have not heard back.

    Thread Starter ronchicago

    (@ronchicago)

    18 years, 11 months ago

    while i am awaiting a response i found another trackback tester. looking at it now myself…

    http://www.ukbloggersguide.com/tips/2007/08/free-trackback-.html

    Thread Starter ronchicago

    (@ronchicago)

    18 years, 11 months ago

    the tamba link was very good at not only explaining it but it worked – made an automatic trackback comment on site A. The only problem is i tried several ways before waiting for the comment to appear so i have to start over to see how i did it. ;-0 in this case, elapsed time = 15 minutes plus or minus. more later.

    Thread Starter ronchicago

    (@ronchicago)

    18 years, 11 months ago

    ok. figured it out first time! ultimately simple per tamba explanation. thank you. note: i was practicing on two of my own sites. an important detail: i had to delete original comments, post, and trackback/ping, and start completely over. it seems you can’t trackback on same post twice.

    Thread Starter ronchicago

    (@ronchicago)

    18 years, 11 months ago

    what was accomplished was figuring out trackback when on a site that has a “trackback” provision = the word “trackback” is in the trackback link. there are a lot of sites that don’t have this link. on movabletype sites, among others, there is a “permalink”. what’s the difference; what would i do differently?

    Chris_K

    (@handysolo)

    18 years, 11 months ago

    In most cases, the permalink on other platforms can be considered the trackback link. That whole “/trackback” on the end of the URL appears to not be as common these days anyways…

    Of course, if you link the site in your article, WP is going to do a Pingback automatically with no intervention. But you can still paste those links down into the trackback field of the post editor as well.

    Thread Starter ronchicago

    (@ronchicago)

    18 years, 11 months ago

    Understood. Thank you!

    You also bring up pinging and I was going to open a thread on pinging, but maybe let’s try here until advised otherwise. Pinging is only “undercover” i.e., it is all about indexing. When someone pings me I don’t know it and vice versa, right? The only visible evidence is at the technorati’s, for example, where you can see the latest posts. And aggregators which also gets notified of latest posts. But a typical blog does not “see” evidence other than the results of ranking, linking, etc.

    Moderator Samuel Wood (Otto)

    (@otto42)

    WordPress.org Admin

    18 years, 11 months ago

    Don’t get confused now.

    Pingbacks and Trackbacks look very similar, even though they operate differently. But receiving either of them will look like a “Comment” of sorts in WordPress.

    Pingbacks are automatic. You post a link to another site in a post, WordPress will send a Pingback to it.

    Trackbacks are not automatic. You use the trackback form on the Write Post page to send a trackback.

    But either way, they’ll look sorta like a comment when you get them.

    “Pings” to sites like Technorati and Pingomatic and such are entirely different and are not what you’re talking about at all.

    Thread Starter ronchicago

    (@ronchicago)

    18 years, 11 months ago

    1) Rogerthat on Technorati and pingomatic and that ping is automatic and “trackback” is not. Here are two examples of the trackback process:

    TRACKBACK – Example 1
    Another_Blog wants to reference My_Blog: Another_Blog (if it’s not a WP blog or does not have pinging enabled), takes My_Blog’s trackback URI and places in their blogging application’s trackback field.

    TRACKBACK – Example 2
    My_Blog wants to reference Another_Blog: if Another_Blog is not a WP blog and doesn’t support auto ping, get Another_Blog’s trackback URI and place it in the ‘Send trackbacks to:’ field of My_Blog.

    NOTE: the above examples are for original posts. Could you also make this work from the comment mode?

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