Trackback Etiquette

Code-wise a trackback is putting a link on your post to their site. When you publish a post, they get a little trackback in their comments section (if they run WP or other blog software).

As an academic, if you’re running a professional blog, I’d email them as well a short “I mentioned your article FOO in mine, BAZ, at https://iamcool.com/postname.’

Thank you. I will take the advice on contacting them via email which is a good idea.

Can I please ask you how this works on my end with WP? For instance I have deleted trackbacks that were obviously spam. But I also approved a valid Trackback that appears to have been made on a /page/. And I am not seeing this trackback either on the Website itself or in the editable page when I am logged into WP. Am I correct in assuming that these things don’t work the same way on a Page as they would on a Post?

Do I need to turn something on to have these show up on the Blog?!

Also, can I /move/ it to a Post where it would be better suited since it is relatively important? I mean, I would prefer it is not on the page anyway…

Lastly, I guess I should expect /all/ internal links on my site to turn up as Trackbacks on my site? I mean, I ask this because I am seeing a lot of what appear to be internal links showing up as trackbacks but there does not seem to be enough of them to be /all/ the internal links…

THANK YOU

And I am not seeing this trackback either on the Website itself or in the editable page when I am logged into WP.

It should be in your comments.

If you don’t have visitble comments on your site, you won’t see the pings/trackbacks.

And no, you can’t move it.

I guess I should expect /all/ internal links on my site to turn up as Trackbacks on my site?

Sadly, yes, but I hate it so I disabled it:

function no_self_ping( &$links ) {
		$home = get_option( 'home' );
		foreach ( $links as $l => $link )
			if ( 0 === strpos( $link, $home ) )
               unset($links[$l]);
		}
	add_action( 'pre_ping', 'no_self_ping' );

Hi Ipstenu. Thanks so much.

Is there a way to let this professional comment get through to the Page but to not have Comments? For instance, can I /temporarily/ enable comments on this /Page/ somehow and let it get through? I really don’t want to deal with other comments in general but in the case where there are valid pingbacks from professionals I would love to let them get through…

Also, it seems bizarre to me that this is put on a PAGE since this Page is really an /information/ page for the site and not what I would consider a conventional BLOG POST. I mean, this isn’t really a page that would have comments turned on for anyway unless I am badly missing something. I mean, I feel a bit dumb asking this but here is how it shows up in WP:

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/15285654/Screen%20shot%202012-02-12%20at%2002.05.51%20PM.png

and here is the PAGE that they linked to:

‘https://formpig.com/blog/?page_id=699’ https://formpig.com/blog/?page_id=699

Would a link such as this show up the SAME if they linked to a PAGE on my Blog as it would if they linked to a BLOG POST on my blog – I mean, I guess this is assuming I turn comments on?

Thanks for the help here because I am not doing so well on my own with this…

REGARDS

Hi Ipstenu.

Thanks for the help and in letting me think this through.

I think one thing I can do is ask them to change the link so that the trackback will go to a BLOG POST which I would prefer.

Then in this case I would simply have the issue of knowing if I can let this pingback get through (it would be very nice to show this on my site) while not allowing all comments all the time which I really don’t want to have to deal with.

Also thanks for the internal comment out links code…

– Jon