Blogging: March 2007 Archives

You've likely heard the term "trackback" in reference to blogs, but do you know how to make one? Like most things techie, it's really quite simple once you know how.

Here's a step by step guide to the basics of how to make a trackback.

1) If you are reading someone's blog and you like a particular post, click on the title of the article.

2) That will bring you to a page that is exclusively devoted to that article. Look in the address bar of that page and copy the link (that link is called a PERMALINK).

3) Now go to your own blog and paste that link into an post that you write. For example, you might write "I was just over at Sally's blog reading her excellent post http://www.sallysblog.com/title-of-the-post-you-like/.

4) In most blogging software that's all you have to do. When you publish your post it will automatically "ping" Sally's blog and leave her a message saying that you did a trackback to her.

5) Watch your screen the first time you do it to see if there's a message that says something to the effect of "pinging http://www.sallysblog.com/title-of-the-post-you-like/"

6) If you don't see a message to this effect, then it means that your blogging software doesn't do trackbacks automatically. In that case, you'll have to do an extra step: look on the page where you composed your post for a place that says "trackbacks". In the blogging software that I use, that place is down in the lower right corner. Paste the PERMALINK (http://www.sallysblog.com/title-of-the-post-you-like/) in the trackback box and publish your post.

And that's it!

This is a really simplified version of how to make a trackback. There are, of course, finer points that you can learn by reading posts such as the one here by Joe Pisano (via Liz Strauss at Problogger)