TrackBack-link stuff

Tue, 11 Feb 2003

I finally decided what I'm doing with the TrackBack URLs. They're going back to being links, because I went in and found where the error message stuff was coded (not all that hard, really), remembered to save a backup of the original file before I changed anything, and added some hopefully-helpful text, so that people will now get told This is a TrackBack URL, not a real link. If you want to ping me, copy the URL in your browser's location bar or hit the back button and right-click the link you clicked to get here. instead of just Need a Source URL (url). (Well, actually they will get told Need a Source URL (url) as well, but they'll get told the other stuff too.)

If anyone else is wondering, the file to change in the Movable Type installation is lib/MT/App/Trackback.pm.

Comments

Martin Wisse says:

So explain it to me in very very simple terms: how to I ping you to get my blog to display in your trackbacks?

Laurabelle says:

Generally I send TrackBack pings by getting my Movable Type installation to do it for me. However, I have just determined, with the help of the Movable Type documentation, that it is entirely possible to ping Movable Type blogs manually.

For my blog, the URL to ping is this:
http://www.niceperson.org/cgi-imps/mt/mt-tb.cgi?tb_id=ID&url=URL&title=TITLE&blog_name=BLOGNAME

ID is the TrackBack ID for the post on my blog. (It's the number at the end of the TrackBack URL.) URL is the permanent link for your blog entry. I think the rest of it is pretty self-explanatory. You need to give at least entry title or blog name (or preferably both), or else there won't be any text for the link. An excerpt is nice but could, I imagine, be cumbersome for a manual ping. You should convert spaces to "%20" unless your browser does that automagically.

It's a simple HTTP GET request, so fill out the URL as you desire, stick it in your browser location bar, and submit the request. If you don't get an error, it worked.

Phil Ringnalda says:

But don't count on being able to ping with a GET for much longer: I'd guess that MT 2.6 won't accept GET pings, since the spec talks about it being deprecated for POST and no longer accepted after January 2003 (which always sounds to me like Ben has a timebomb planted in everyone's code - though as widespread as MT is getting, I guess he does, sort of).

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