Trackback
What is it?
Trackback is a facility that allows you to easily contribute and respond to feedback from around the blog community. As always it is a feature that is often best illustrated with an example.
Lets say you are reading another person's blog site. You have just read a particular entry that you find interesting enough to comment on. Normally, the way to go about this would be to leave your thoughts in their comments section. While this is a great way to contribute, it does starve your own blog site of content. You may be inspired from the blog entry to write something slightly different or more thorough.
So instead of leaving a detailed and potentially long comment, you can write your own blog entry in your own blog and create a special link (known as a trackback) to the original blog entry from where you were inspired. Ordinarily you could put in a simple URL to the original blog entry. Problem with this method is that the original blog entry doesn't get to know or promote your new post.
How to use it?
To create the trackback you must find the trackback URL that the site promotes for that entry. This is usually found underneath the entry in the comment section. In the third tabs along.
Copy this to be used later. Its not just blog-city that use this, go to any blogging service and they provide permalinks for use in trackbacking.
Login to your blog's Administration interface and under the Archives tab, select the entry for which you wish to add a trackback, or create a new entry under Compose in order to notify another blog.
On the right you will notice a number of tabs, info, Settings, Access and help. Choose the Settings tab.
Look to the bottom of the tab until you see icon (8) for trackback and click to open. Firstly you need to verify the trackback before you use it so click the tab Find trackback and paste in the url you have for the entry you are wanting to trackback to. Then hit the Locate button.
Then choose the icon to use the found trackback link. Once published this will then alert the other blog of your entry. That's all there is to it. You have now created a link between your two blog entries. This kind of remote commenting allows for greater detail without losing the readers. You can even use trackback to refer to other similar entries on your blog where you've discussed the same topic, - a linking mechanism
Receiving trackbacks
Your own blog entries have trackback already enabled for others to remotely comment. When someone trackbacks to your blog, their details will be listed under your own blog comments. A small title and the URL will be displayed, allowing your readers to click in order to read more.
Trackback is supported by many blog sites and is a great way for you to comment around the blog world while retaining your own identity and many links back to your blog.
To approve a trackback, go to the Archives menu and on the right are tabs, choose the Feedback tab. Finally choose View Trackbacks awaiting approval (4).
