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By jockox3@drupal.org on
I'm using Drupal for a number of projects, but particularly my blog at http://www.jockcoats.org.uk/
When I post something to my blog (I use ecto to do so) that includes a link to another person's blog elsewhere the fact that I have referred to their blog (without me knowingly doing anything) appears under their blog posting on their page and I can get hits from that, which is good. But I want to return the favour so to speak - when someone else posts something - maybe on a blogger or typepad or whatever blog - ie not on my site anyway - I want a link to that to appear under the relevant post on my site in Drupal.
Now I figured that this would be accomplished with the Trackback module. But since installing that all I have had are spam trackbacks. I've never had a "real" link from another blogger on any system. Is Trackback the right thing for what I'm wanting to do? I'm sure it is, but since it's not picking posts up that I know have been posted in the past few days as I've seen the links coming in in my logs from other bloggers' pages, I'm beginning to wonder. Am I missing something?
Comments
Nobody interested in this?
Nobody interested in this? I wonder how many people use Drupal as a blogging platform - are trackbacks not that popular perhaps? I find them essential and reall y can't get the way Drupal handles them (or appears not to).
Trackback Spam is not new if
Trackback Spam is not new if you are using Trackback module with Drupal. This usually is the case when only registered users can post comments on the blog, so the trackback method is the only way that people can spam.
Yeah - that's not really my
Yeah - that's not really my problem. I've read other articles about ways to stop most of the spam, and even doing it manually is not too onerous at the moment. My biggest concern is that I don't seem to be getting any genuine trackbacks at all. I know it's working as if I reference a post of my own it does work.
One thing I don't understand and may be part of the problem is that I use auto URL to create nice looking URLs, but the trackback addresses are based on the node number. If someone does link to a post of mine they are usually linking to the plain text URLs. Should I be putting this address in the track-back address instead of the node number?
Yeah - that's not really my
Yeah - that's not really my problem. I've read other articles about ways to stop most of the spam, and even doing it manually is not too onerous at the moment. My biggest concern is that I don't seem to be getting any genuine trackbacks at all. I know it's working as if I reference a post of my own it does work.
One thing I don't understand and may be part of the problem is that I use auto URL to create nice looking URLs, but the trackback addresses are based on the node number. If someone does link to a post of mine they are usually linking to the plain text URLs. Should I be putting this address in the track-back address instead of the node number?
Maybe you could try adding
Maybe you could try adding more variety in terms of content an categories on your blog. Add content which is unique and would get genuine visitors to your blog and prompt them to give you a Trackback.
Thanks for that, but that's
Thanks for that, but that's not really the problem. All my content is unique, I get plenty of visitors, at last count I had over a hundred "free tagged" categories and I get people linking to my blog. Just they do not ever show up in the trackbacks received. And I know some at least of those people are using trackbacking software because I see their trackbacks on others' blogs.
It happens with my own posts too. Even if I link to a post of my own it does not show as a trackback received unless that is I manually add the trackback in the trackback section on the edit tab.
Yet I still get hundreds of spam trackbacks, so something must be working!
Trackback and Pingback
There are Trackbacks and there are Pingbacks. They're similar, but they use different protocols.
Pingback -- if you put a link in your post and your platform is capable of pingback, it sends a pingback announcement to the platform at the link you posted in your post. If the receiving platform is pingback enabled, it visits your post, makes sure you have a link pointing to its page, and publishes your pingback in or near the comment section.
Trackback -- you have to put the trackback url in the trackback box when you are posting.
So, from what you are saying, it sounds like the Trackback module can do both.
After reading dozens of posts here on Drupal.org, it's still not clear, but it doesn't seem that the TB module can use Akismet yet. Akisment on my WP blog has blocked about 99% of the spam and so far no false positives.
Thanks...
I donwloaded the latest dev snapshot of trackback and it now handles spam extremely well.
But I still do not receive any "real" trackbacks. Yet I am linked to by countless sites (my blog has a "40" rating on Technorati whihc means someone must be doing so!). In fact for the past two weeks I've been in the "Britblog Roundup".
From reading the documentation for the trackback module it would appear that, even if the author of an article pointing at my blog does not consciously "ping" my blog, if I go to the page that links to mine and click through with the link they provide, the "auto-discover" function of the trackback module should be able to work out that there is a reference to mine on that other, referring, site and setup a trackback entry.
But this does not appear to be happening, and I have no idea where to go now. Nobody seems to be reading the project issues at the moment where I have also posted about this.
It's really annoying as this is such a key part of political blogging at least here in my opinion.