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I’m Confused…

I don’t get this whole “trackback” thing, so now I’m making a post to link to Todd’s post about the feature and Kristine’s too so maybe then I’ll understand…

Edited: Nope, linking like that doesn’t work either. Can someone please speak slowly & clearly to me and tell me how this thing works?

By Christine

Christine is an Avenger of Sexiness. Her Superpower is helping Hot Mamas grow their Confidence by rediscovering their Beauty. She lives in the Heights in Houston, Texas, works as a boudoir photographer, and writes about running a Business of Awesome. In her spare time, she loves to knit, especially when she travels. She & her husband Mike have a food blog at Spoon & Knife.

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17 replies on “I’m Confused…”

I don’t get it either. Of course, I haven’t read up on it beyond a quick scan, so that may have a bit to do with it. 😉

I have yet to play with the latest version of MT, but the way I read it, it sounds like they kinda combined the weblogs ping with the commenting system. In other words, you can “respond” to someone else’s blog on your own and when you post that entry, it will ping the other person’s blog, letting them know that you’re referencing their blog. I *think* that when you ping the person’s blog, it will show up in a “trackback record,” on that person’s blog, letting people see who has responded … Kinda confusing, but I think that’s the way it works 🙂

I thought it was like turning comments on or off on an entry.

ste has it very close to right. I’ve seen it explained well here, too:

http://kdblog.com/archives/001293.php
http://kdblog.com/archives/001294.php

What I’m trying to figure out now is why so many of the pings are blank (both on Todd’s and Kristine’s).

Oh no, it’s separate from your comments. It’s supposed to help you follow who links to a post of yours … but I have no clue how to link to one! LOL! (As I demonstrated by my post here!)

Btw, the ping isn’t done through a link like you initially tried here, but rather in a new entry field in MT 2.2 or via bookmarklet.

Blank pings are probably from ME! Since I don’t have MY trackback stuff set up and I just linked to both of their posts. You think?

I’m not sure to be honest. Some bookmarklets aren’t setting up properly (I had this problem with Todd’s) and the trackback URL is supposed to appear at the top of the window when you launch a bookmarklet. It isn’t for his, either (and the MT forums are full of this problem). So I’m wondering if it’s a bookmarklet glitch rather than just a link. Not sure though…still trying to learn the ropes myself…

The entry field bit is what I meant was like comments. That it’s an actual box choice / feature in MT 2.2.

I wrote s’more about it over here – more on trackback 🙂

Miss Ch, you won’t be able to actually do any pings until you have MT2.2 installed, so the blank pings can’t be from you. I haven’t upgraded to MT2.21, so maybe that’s why I’m still displaying the blank pings.

Let me know if I can write more if that didn’t help you enough!

See, if you had trackback, I’d have pinged this post so that you would have gotten a ping notification and I wouldn’t have HAD to leave a comment or emailed you about it 🙂

But then I wouldn’t have had the thrill of reading your comment … and that wouldn’t have been any fun now, would it? 😉

First I have to get ready to go see Jenn, and then I’ll ask her to hold my hand while I upgrade. Maybe it won’t be so scary then.

I linked to Todd last night. But when it didn’t work, I felt stupid and deleted my post.

I agree, KD’s explanation (linked twice above) rocks.

I suspect this is a feature that sounded better when someone thought of it than it actually is in execution.

Well, I think the feature is just so new that it will take a bit to work out the glitches. I can already see a lot of uses that they might not have intended initially, but which leaving it fairly open will allow for. I, being a spineless wimp, will probably wait til they’ve somewhat stabilized the issues before upgrading (or until I get bored some day, whichever comes first – probably til I get bored cause that happens often).

see, the thing about trackback is that right now it’s the alpha geeks playing with it. when it’s more widely implemented, and there is *context* (for instance, today i pinged my first post that was actually related in a non-trackback way).

also, there will be separate pages to show trackback threads (!) and the main purpose of this, in the begignning, was if there were master categories in a centralized blog, … i’m getting ahead of myself.

also it would be a great collaboration tool.

and you know those friday five thingys? this thing was MADE for that.

Maybe we’ll upgrade together while you’re here… I’m being lazy these days, and am in a sort of “if it ‘aint broke, don’t fix it mood”… so I haven’t upgraded yet, myself.

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