Does a site have to be using blog software to utilize the trackback feature on their site?
February 22, 2006 3:06 PM Subscribe
Does a site have to be using blog software to utilize the trackback feature? I thought the answer was yes, but then I saw that PR Web has just added Trackbacks to their releases. So what is the secret of the Trackback?
Looking at the link:
posted by evariste at 3:16 PM on February 22, 2006
<!--
<rdf:RDF xmlns:rdf=http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"
xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
xmlns:trackback="http://madskills.com/public/xml/rss/module/trackback/">
<rdf:Description
rdf:about="http://www.prweb.com/releases/2006/2/prweb349374.htm"
dc:identifier="http://www.prweb.com/releases/2006/2/prweb349374.htm"
trackback:ping="http://www.prweb.com/pingpr.php/Q3Jhcy1Ib3JyLVNxdWEtSGFsZi1IYWxmLVplcm8=" />
</rdf:RDF>
-->
That's the magic stuff that makes trackback autodiscovery happen. You can't see it without viewing the page source because it's sneakily hidden in an HTML comment. All you need is template-based content management software to generate that, and I imagine an outfit like PRWeb that puts out such a large quantity of words has to have a CMS. Blogs are just a specialized form of CMS.posted by evariste at 3:16 PM on February 22, 2006
pingpr.php is the name of the script on their server that accepts trackback pings from your blogging software. Presumably, it then publishes them somewhere near the press release.
posted by evariste at 3:17 PM on February 22, 2006
posted by evariste at 3:17 PM on February 22, 2006
This thread is closed to new comments.
As for trackback autodiscovery, all that means is that a standard bit of invisible html code (RDF?) is present on the page for trackback-capable tools to detect.
In other words, blogs popularized trackback, but the technology is a blog-independent link notification/link advertisement mechanism.
posted by evariste at 3:12 PM on February 22, 2006