I’m not understanding what trackback does…

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  hanso · Member · Oct 30, 2006 at 3:52 pm

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  I accidentally clicked “trackback” under one of my posts today while I wasn’t logged in, it didn’t seem to do anything, and the option has since disappeared. Whats teh deal exactly?

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  timethief · Member · Oct 30, 2006 at 4:01 pm

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  If you use the work of another person somewhere else on the web when composing your post then you send a courtesy trackback to that website’s url as a way of recognizing the other party’s work and your use of it. (This is actually very similar to the footnotes and/or references one would use when writing a paper.) You enter the url in the trackback area when you make your post and the result will be an automatic notification sent to the other site when your post is published.

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  podz · Member · Oct 30, 2006 at 4:11 pm

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  And more information is here

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  hanso · Member · Oct 30, 2006 at 4:20 pm

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  So if I clicked trackback on my own site while I wasn’t logged in…that did what?

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  drmike · Member · Oct 30, 2006 at 4:29 pm

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  Nothing. It’s just the link that others should use when they do a trackback to your post.

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  axewielderx · Member · Oct 30, 2006 at 4:30 pm

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  Nothing. I did this once myself and nothing ever happened. I also was trying to figure out what it did.LOL!

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  drmike · Member · Oct 30, 2006 at 4:34 pm

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  Now to make things confusing some themes will have the trackback link but with a ‘#’ mark in the URL. What those are is if you click on them, your browser will jump down to where the the list of trackbacks to that post if there are any. You can see an explaination of this type of link in the FAQ.