Trackback and Pingback

By Timothy R Butler | Posted at 7:15 AM

Here's a question for my readers. Does your blogware do pingbacks, trackbacks or both? I'm trying to decide how to implement such things in SAFARI. It looks like trackback auto-discovery is fairly clunky, and, if I understand Six Apart's design of the same, it merely looks for an XML/RDF tag embedded inside the page — something I believe would not work on, for example, What in Tarnation!?!?!?!, which, to the best of my knowledge, seems to be lacking any XML/RDF information embedded on the article pages.

To continue to examine Christopher's blog (hope you don't mind, Christopher), I do see that he has a properly implemented < link > tag for Pingback auto-discovery on his site. Given this, I suppose SAFARI could automatically pingback every link mentioned in a post, but only trackback if explicitly told to. Of course, the other question is whether I should pingback to sites I also trackback. My dear reader, how does your blogware work on this matter?

Color me confused and boggled about this element of blogware implementation.

Update: OK, so Christopher's blog does have RDF encoded on the front page. But I haven't figured out how to properly find that if I link to a permalink rather than the front page. And that still leaves the question of whether I should pingback and trackback the same link. So, your insight is still much appreciated.

Update 2: It helps to examine more than one blog. As it turns out, Pressed and Ed both have proper embedded RDF information on the article pages. Kevin does not, but then again, I don't think his blog supports trackbacks now that he's moved off of WordPress.

So Christopher, straiten up and get trackback RDF information embedded in your article pages — it's the WITty thing to do. ;-) And, no, don't bother looking in my blog's HTML, I haven't implemented trackbacks yet.

Leave comments about how pingbacks and trackbacks work for your blogware below… I'll be very grateful for your help.

Tags: blogware

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10 comments posted so far.

Re: Trackback and Pingback

No ping/trackback thing on my site. I built all the “blogware” (or what to call it) myself, and I haven’t figured out how to do the RDS/XML feeds yet. (I’m thinking about it, though.)

Posted by Flip - Jan 17, 2005 | 11:10 AM- Location: Sweden

Re: Trackback and Pingback

I do not believe TextPattern has implemented trackbacks. I am not sure I fully understand them, but I have not found anything in my settings or documentation about them that indicates my blog software can do them. Or maybe I am just clueless.

Posted by jtr - Jan 17, 2005 | 4:29 PM- Location:

Re: Trackback and Pingback

Oh dear. I have to figure out to do that.

I noticed that the template that I am using, Kubrick (http://binarybonsai.com/kubrick/) promises trackback but the address is never given anywhere on the archive pages.

Maybe it is an commented out (is that the correct term?) and I just haven’t found it. Let me check.

Posted by Christopher - Jan 17, 2005 | 5:23 PM- Location: MO

Re: Trackback and Pingback

I just uncommented a snippet of code that reads [?php trackback_rdf(); ?]

I wonder if that will work.

I still need to find the code that will print the trackback address on the entry.

Posted by Christopher - Jan 17, 2005 | 7:14 PM- Location: MO

Re: Trackback and Pingback

I don’t think TextPattern supports it, either. If they do, I haven’t come across it. It’s not something I’m overly interested in, though. Even with the old wordpress version, I think I removed the links to trackback pages (though I probably didn’t remove the XML/RDF crap). If you want to leave a comment, leave a comment. If you want to tell me you posted elsewhere, leave a comment saying so.  :)

Posted by kevin - Jan 17, 2005 | 10:24 PM- Location: Milwaukie, OR

Re: Trackback and Pingback

I’m pretty sure I’m the same as Ed Hurst.

Crazy people not using WordPress… lol!

Posted by Josiah - Jan 17, 2005 | 11:43 PM- Location: Severn, MD

Re: Trackback and Pingback

Flip: It is always nice knowing there is someone as crazy as me — implementing their own blogware. RSS feeds are a cinch to implement, btw.

jtr: I think you are right about TextPattern.

Christopher: Looks like you fixed it — and yes, that was the correct term. :-)

Kevin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Josiah: Your blog looks good.

Posted by Timothy R. Butler - Jan 18, 2005 | 1:36 AM- Location: MO

Re: Trackback and Pingback

RSS! That’s what I meant! :)

Yes, to be honest, the blog is more of an excuse to learn things than to actually write in my case. Not that I don’t find the writing part funny, but without the increasing number of entries I wouldn’t see the need for learning more about how to handle large data sets, if you see what I mean?

Good luck with the pinging! :)

Posted by Flip - Jan 20, 2005 | 2:02 PM- Location: Sweden

Re: Trackback and Pingback

RSS! That’s what I meant! :)

Yes, to be honest, the blog is more of an excuse to learn things than to actually write in my case. Not that I don’t find the writing part funny, but without the increasing number of entries I wouldn’t see the need for learning more about how to handle large data sets, if you see what I mean?

Good luck with the pinging! :)

Posted by Flip - Jan 20, 2005 | 2:02 PM- Location: Sweden

Re: Trackback and Pingback

RSS! That’s what I meant! :)

Yes, to be honest, the blog is more of an excuse to learn things than to actually write in my case. Not that I don’t find the writing part funny, but without the increasing number of entries I wouldn’t see the need for learning more about how to handle large data sets, if you see what I mean?

Good luck with the pinging! :)

Posted by Flip - Jan 20, 2005 | 2:03 PM- Location: Sweden

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