Not To Sound Stupid But If The Shoe Fits...

Hey, something I've been wondering for a while. Maybe ya'll can help me out a bit. What are links, pings, and trackbacks? I mean, what are their purposes?

Pity me, for I am ignorant.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Just started reading your blog a bit ago - not sure where I came across it, probably from Google News.

I am not the best person to answer your questions, but a trackback is an automatic (depending on your blog software) link to someone else's blog when you write about something you read on their blog. So, you could write a post on your blog, and then write a comment on the other guy's blog saying, "hey, I liked/disliked what you said, and so I wrote a whole post about it on my blog, come check it out", but a trackback is simpler and quicker. On my blog (LifeType), I just have to click the button that says "send trackbacks" when I write a post, and everything else is taken care of. I have seen other software where you have to explicitly copy the trackback link from the other guy's web page, and paste it into your post, but hopefully, the authors of the the other blog software will figure out how to do automatic ones soon.

A link (unless it has some other connotation that I don't know about) is a underlined clicky thing from one web page to another. Lots of people have links to other blogs that they find interesting, so if someone likes your blog, maybe they would like to read the blogs you read as well.

I think pings are basically the same thing as a trackback, different blog software implement them in different ways.
Shayne said…
Jon,

Thank you! That helped to shed a lot of light on the subject.
Unknown said…
Hi Shayne! There's a new blog out that you might find interesting: http://bloggingbasics101.com/. Helped me answer some of these exact questions! Have a great evening!

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