Blog Exercises: How to Respond to a Trackback

In the first blog exercise on trackbacks I explained how trackbacks work and how to respond to trackbacks. It’s time to revisit the concept of how to respond to a trackback. In the exercise, I described the unique quality of trackbacks for tracking conversations across the web. You publish something, someone likes it and publishes […]

Fight Against Trackback Death

I’ve heard the many threats of trackbacks and pingbacks dying over the years, going the way of the virtual dinosaur, but I’m terrified to hear from Andraz Tori that Typepad is killing pingback functionality and stating that WordPress might be considering it, removing the joy of getting a notification that someone online is talking about […]

Blog Exercises: Trackback Check-Up

It’s time to check your trackbacks. In Blog Exercises: Trackbacks and Blog Exercises: Backlinks you learned about trackbacks, the automatic process of a site linking to yours and generating a comment-like notification to alert you of the link to your article, and helping your readers discover what others are saying about your article. In this […]

Blog Exercises: Trackbacks

Trackbacks are like an invitation to a party. It is also like legitimate gossip. Trackbacks are notes telling you that someone is talking about you. Trackbacks are part of the important connections that form the true sense of the “web” on the Internet. WordPress and most modern publishing platforms generate trackbacks automatically. As common as […]

Blog Struggles: Trackbacks Count

At a blog conference recently, I overheard the following exchange over a laptop as part of a blog review exercise: “For your blog to be successful, you need more comments on your blog posts.” “I have plenty of comments on my blog. See, this one has 14 comments.” “That post has only one comment. The […]

The Debate Over Comments and Trackbacks

Which came first? The comment or the trackback? Or should I be more clear in my question? Which should come first? The comments or the trackbacks? I have long been a fan of separating trackbacks from comments. Comments are the dialog and trackbacks are the outside discussions, incoming links from sites discussing the topic on […]

Help Stop Trackback Comment Spam Via Google

Akismet is working overtime on this blog to fight off comment spam in all forms. Combined with the community effort of all WordPress.com bloggers, comment spam is caught and rarely released on our blogs. However, I’ve lately spotted some very annoying and frustrating comment spam. It appears to be caught by Akismet, but it shows […]

The Debate Over Trackbacks from Private Blogs

WordPress.com blogs are now able to be set to “private”, restricting access and viewing to only those with passwords. I think private blogs are fabulous, allowing those who don’t want anyone to read what they write the ability to blog in privacy, and specific groups of people to blog for each other and themselves, free […]

WordPress.com Bug: Anonymous Trackbacks and Comments

There is a new bug in WordPress.com town. You race home and rush to your computer to see if anyone has left you a comment on your blog only to find a bunch of Anonymous folks have left comments on your WordPress.com blog. STOP!!! Before you hit that SPAM button, this is not comment spam. […]

Trackbacks and Pings Out of Order? Ping-o-matic now back online

According to news on the new Pingomatic blog now on WordPress.com, Ping-o-matic is now up and running after a few days of trouble. So if your trackbacks and pings were out of order or not functioning with WordPress.com or your full WordPress blog, this is why: Sorry for the downtime, it was actually NOT related […]

Tiny Problem with WordPress 2.0 and Trackbacks

It has come to the attention of the WordPress support team and developers that there is a tiny problem with WordPress 2.0 and trackbacks. They are investigating the situation as it isn’t consistent, though it is consistently reported. There is a new patch that seems to fix the issue, but the investigation continues. According to […]

Separating Comments and Trackbacks in WordPress – The Answer

WordPress 2.7 News Update: For information on the new structure of comments and trackbacks in WordPress 2.7, please see Migrating Plugins and Themes to 2.7 – Enhanced Comment Display in the WordPress Codex, Justin Tadlock – Making your theme’s comments compatible with WordPress 2.7 and earlier versions and Sivel – Separating Pings from Comments in […]

Enhanced Trackbacks – Making Trackbacks Work for You

Understanding trackbacks and pingbacks and pings can make you crazy. I’ll have a better explanation article for you soon, but I wanted to point out a helpful article to those who already have a clue on what trackbacks are, and how to enhance them to really make them work for you using a little javascript […]

Blog Exercise: When Was the Last Time You Got Personal

I walked into a friend’s home and found the fridge covered with refrigerator art from her seven year old. The traditional home often features such childhood artwork but this was extremely precious as the child has learning disabilities and drawing. The artwork was beautiful. I stood there transfixed at the crude scribbles, trying to find […]

Blog Exercises: Are You Setting an Example for Others?

A milestone in personal rights seemed to have been achieved recently when US basketball player, Jason Collins declared publicly he was gay, hopefully setting an example for others that it is now “safe” to come out of the closet. The news in and around his announcement has me thinking about heroes, mentors, and risk-takers, those […]