Can anyone help me with Trackback. In the previous post, I was repling to Bud Hunt and the others who posted comments on his Bud the Teacher blog. At the end of his post, there is this Trackback URL: http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/7326870
I assumed that I should use that instead of the permalink for that entry when I linked back to his blog. However, when I tried to follow that link, I received the following error message:
1 Trackback pings and Comments must use HTTP POST
I did a bit of searching online, but everything I read made me think I was doing it correctly. That makes it sound like a problem with Bud’s blog, and maybe in this case it is, but I don’t think so because I’ve NEVER gotten a Trackback URL to work.
Next I researched HTTP POST and found what it does but not how to use it– it must be too complex for the WebMonkey Cheat Sheet to list.
Anyone have any suggestions?
Trackback is used to let Bud know that you are posting about his article. I personally use haloscan.com to manage my trackbacks, but there are other sites that do it too.
For me, I tell haloscan my permalink url and the trackback url of the site I’m blogging on and it sends a “ping” to the trackback url. The ping includes my permalink, so the site I’m blogging on then knows I’m blogging on them. They can then stick a little message under their article that says you have an article related to it. People can then click on your url and see what you have to say about Bud’s article.
It’s nice of Bud to do this because it can drive a few viewers your way. It’s even nicer when you consider that he probably has to go through his trackbacks on a regular basis and delete all the jerks who ping his trackback with spam websites that are looking for eyeballs but don’t actually have anything related to his blog anywhere in their website.
Oops, almost forgot, I hope the above helped!
Daniel, Thank for the explanation! It helped, but I’m still not sure what I should do differently. Any suggestions?
Trackbacks are used by computer programs, not humans. The trackback URL is the address one computer program should send to another program.
Your computer program sends a trackback notification to another computer program when you write a post about a URL hosted by the other computer program. This is called ‘pinging’.
This is all done automatically; that is why I am emphasizing the bit about computer programs.
Somethings, you have to tell your computer program the location of the trackback URL. This was more common in early blogging software engines, and is described here: http://www.cruftbox.com/cruft/docs/trackback.html
Probably, your blogging software does not have a box where you submit a list of URLs to ping. This is because it now automatically retrieves the trackback URL. The mechanism for this (called ‘auto-discovery’) is found here: http://www.sixapart.com/pronet/docs/trackback_spec
Because trackbacks are intended to be used by computer programs only, the URLs do not work when you type them into your web browser.
URLs on the web work in two ways: GET and POST. These are called ‘request types’. GET is intended to simply retrieve a file. You supply the URL and possibly some simple variables, and the server returns the file. POST is intended to be used to submit information. Web-based forms (such as this comment form) use POST.
You could, if you wanted, use a form to successfully send a trackback to a website. If you look at the HTML source code of a form you can see the syntax: form method=”POST” action=”http://www.place.com/trackbackurl”
…
One of the problems with trackback is that spammers have discovered this too, resulting in what is called trackback spam. It’s not as big a problem as comment spam, but it is a pain.
More URLs related to trackback:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trackback
http://www.muhajabah.com/islamicblog/what-is-tb.php
http://drupal.org/project/trackback
Hope this helps.
THANK YOU Stephen!
I finally understand it. I appreciate both your clear explanation and the additional links. Trackback is a mystery to me no longer — and I’ll quit trying to make links of those Trackback URLs. (c: