Test Trackback

Well, today I've decided to play with a feature in MovableType called TrackBack. It is a way of continuing a conversation or discussion thread between multiple blogs.

For example...

Jay posts an article on his blog that I think is interesting, and I want to comment on it. I could post a comment using the Comment feature on his site. If what I want to say is fairly long and involved, though, I may either not want to put the whole thing in a comment, or I may just want to post it on my own blog for my visitors to read. However, if I simply post to my site, Jay's readers will not have any way of knowing I have posted a follow-up that continues or discusses his post.

The answer is the TrackBack system. I can enter a post on my site that sends a "ping" to Jay's site to tell him that I have posted something related to his post. If he has TrackBack enabled, his site will record and log that ping so people who read his post can link to mine if they are interested. Does that make sense? Unfortunately, I don't know of any blogs among my family or friends that currently use TrackBack, so this post is a TrackBack on an earlier post on my site. Kinda cheating, but oh well.

Here's the URL of the post to which I am (in theory at least) tracking back:
Search Capability. If you go to that entry, you will see a link to display TrackBack info, and there you will see a link to this post. Not as glamorous when used on a single site, but hopefully it will spread.