Trackbacks

The term trackback refers to a relatively simple process. A trackback itself is an acknowledgement, a way for blog authors to be alerted when another blog is discussing or linking to a particular entry. Trackbacks originated as a way for bloggers to acknowledge one another through pinging, which is the term used to describe the act of sending a trackback alert. In order for this to work, both sites need to have the trackback features enabled.

You may wonder why tracking back to someone's entry is useful. Bloggers like to know when someone is talking about their entries, especially when that talk is positive. A blogger's readers might want to see what other readers are saying about a particular blog entry, and with trackbacks, they can easily find a list of the sites that reference it. People may find these stuff interesting, and it helps to keep things flowing in a serendipitous manner.

Pinging

A ping is your blog's way of signaling other blogs or websites that you have written a blog entry directly referencing or relevant to one of their entries. Your blog can send out a ping to the other blog to notify it that you wrote a pertinent entry, but provided the blog you pinged has trackbacks enabled, your ping will display itself in the form of a trackback on the correlating blog entry.

Some sites collect pings as a way for people to see what has been updated in the blogosphere. You can visit sites like Technorati, Weblogs, or NewsGator for extensive lists of fresh content from blogs everywhere. You can ping one or all of them when you update your blog.

You can ping a site like this in one of these two ways:

• Your blog software or hosted service may have a place to enter a list of sites you want to ping every time you update. This varies with each type of blog solution, but most have the option.
• You can ping each site manually or take advantage of a pinging service, and do it all in one shot. Pinging services save you time to put on that fresh top coat before you head out.

Setup Gravatar

1. Go to Gravatar.com.


2. Choose Signup from the navigation on the top right of the screen. The signup page appears.


3. Enter the email address you wish to use in the field and click Signup. You are taken to a confirmation page instructing you to check your email account for an email containing a link to activate your registration.


4. Click the link as instructed in the email. You are redirected through your web browser to an account activation confirmation page.


5. Enter your chosen password twice and click Set Password. Next, you are taken to a page offering you an opportunity to opt-in to the email newsletter.


6. If you wish to opt-in to the newsletter, click that option and follow the instructions. You are now redirected to a page displaying your email address and an icon that states No Gravatar.


7. To add a gravatar to this email address, click the blue Add a New One link. You are then taken to a page that offers the option to upload your image from your computer or to use an image located online.


8. Click the Browse button, and then from the File Upload dialog box choose the image from your hard drive you would like to use as your gravatar. You will have the opportunity to crop this image once you have uploaded it.


9. Click Next. You are taken to a page that gives you a little tool to crop your image.


10. Use the slide tool to position your gravatar image without the square to your liking. Then click Crop. You are then redirected to a page for you to set your gravatar rating.


11. Gravatar-enabled sites have the option of setting the rating level of gravatars they want displayed on their site. Choose the rating level you feel is appropriate. You are finally taken to a page congratulating you for creating a gravatar.


12. Click the Back to My Gravatars link to see your email, and this time your uploaded gravatar appears beneath it. Click the gravatar to associate it with your email address. A pop-up window asks you to confirm this association before redirecting you back to your gravatars page.

Avatars and Gravatars

Avatars are little digital pieces of you. A lot of blogs and forum-esque sites allow you to represent yourself with a small picture or symbol. Whatever you choose, it typically appears next to every comment you make on that particular site. Avatars are usually square and range in size. Blogs sometimes provide a present list of avatars you can pick from, or you can upload one you made yourself. Choose wisely, and you can always change it when you get bored with it.

Gravatars, or globally recognized avatars, are in use on some blogs and forums. A gravatar is a small, square image that pops up when you comment on bogs enabled for gravatars. This means you sign up for an account on the gravatar website, enter your email address, and then upload an avatar you would like to associate with that email address. Once you have done that, when you comment using that email address on any site that is gravatar-enabled, your gravatar will appear next to your comment. You can even assign a different avatar to different email addresses in your gravatar account. It is a completely free service and much less of a hassle than changing your avatar on each and every site you visit. Keep in mind that it is seen wherever you comment that has gravatar enabled. If you are big on privacy, you can choose to use something other than a photo to represent who you are.

Setting Comments in WordPress

Here is how to set your comments to moderated and closed by default. You may override them individually per blog post.

1. Log in to your WordPress.com account.
2. Choose My Dashboard from the top navigation.
3. Choose Options from the light blue navigation bar along the top. Next, you will see further options in a dark blue navigation bar.
4. Choose Discussion. The Discussion Options page appears.
5. You will see Before a Comment Appears with a list of three choices. Select the appropriate check boxes to change your default comment settings.
   • An Administrator Must Always Approve the Comment.
   • Comment Author Must Fill Out Name and E-Mail.
   • Comment Author Must Have a Previously Approved Comment.
   If you truly want to let any visitors comment, without entering their name or their email address, completely free to leave anonymous links or hideous comments, by all means leave all the boxes unchecked. However, it is not recommended.

Some software has antispam measures built in but you will need to do a little housekeeping, at least a quick scan of your moderated comments before deleting the spam. A spam comment will occasionally present itself as legitimate and make its way past your antispam filter. These filters are not 100% foolproof, but they are definitely better.

Settings for Blog Comments

There are three main status settings for blog comments:

• Open comments are open and available for anyone to comment at will.
• Closed comments are comments on a blog entry that are no longer open or available for commenting. There may already be comments on the entry, as the author may have had comments open in the past but later decided not to offer new comments.
• Moderated comments appear on blog entries where the author has set the comments to go through an approval phase before the comment appears publicly to the blog. The comment has been received, but will not be posted until the author makes it public.

A blog's popularity can garner tons of comment traffic, which may or may not include trolls. So occasionally people need to put a choke hold on how comments are posted to their site. Instead of allowing anyone to post immediately to the site, bloggers can choose to set moderation on their comments and approval them before they are fully viewable to the public. This reduces the nasties and can help weed out any various spam comments that might leak in. If controlling the words used on your site is important, this is a definite option.

With the increasing popularity of blogs, there is an increase in business trying to hammer in advertising, which means spam. Spammers have found a way to spam blog comments in order to get people to click through to various websites. They created spam bots that crawl around in the belly of the blogsphere and attack blogs where they can, such as in comments and trackbacks by submitting fake ones to your site.

When spammers find your site, you can do little to keep them out. But you can cut them off where they feed. Moderating comments helps keep the spam at bay, but you can try other measures, such as closing comments after a set amount of days. Some blog software, such as Movable Type, ExpressionEngine, and Wordpress allow you to automatically close comments to an individual entry or all blog entries after a set period of time. This prevents spammers from attacking older entries and clogging up the works.

Comments

Comments are the best place to start getting the word out about you and your blog. Surely, you have read someone else's blog. Maybe you have read a hundred blogs. That is great, but no one knows you read them unless you post a comment. Reading and not commenting is often referred to as lurking. Lurking is fine, as long as you don't expect to get anything in return. You get back what you put in. That said, commenting for the sheer benefit of just having something to say is great too. Peoplw love comments.

In order for others to find your blog, they need to know where it is. Participating on someone's blog indicates to the blog author that you have read his or her post and have something to add to the conversation. Bloggers typically provide a link that directs you to a page with a small comment form where you can enter your comment. They generally ask for some kind of name or handle, an email address, and your website address or URL.

When your comment publishes to the site, most blogs display your name and URL along with your charming contribution. Other people reading that same blog may see your comment and follow the link back to your site. There they will discover your latest anecdote and may even comment on your blog and come back the next time you post. It is not recommended to comment just for the sake of getting your link published. This would be the same as spamming someone and would not earn you any friends.

The more you comment, the more places a link to your blog can be found. This betters your chances that people will come to your site to see what is new. You still have to post regularly to keep them interested, but getting them there is half the battle. Commenting does not mean instant traffic to your site, and it will take some time to develop a readership. But this is a great place to start.