Trackback, Pingback, Oh My!

I'm halfway through a series of enhancements to News Articles that I think are going to be really great for the users of this module.

The first thing News Articles will be getting is "Trackback" functionality. This feature should really help search engine ranking and drive more traffic between sites, basically a trackback can be defined as:-

Trackback: Sometimes called ping or pingbacks, trackback is an automatic link notification between blogs. When a blog publishes a post which links to another blog, the linker sends a 'trackback' message to the linked blog. The linked blog receives the trackback message and usually treats it as a new comment for the linked blog entry.

You can view the official trackback specification here.

The next piece of functionality are Pings, this can be defined as:- 

Pings: Trackback and pings are about the same technically, but I meant ping as in, "Notify services like Technorati or Pingomatic about new posts.". This ensures that posts are indexed by search engines sooner, and they show up in lists of 'recent blog posts'. Wordpress uses a single text field option for the blog to specify a list of update services to ping when posts are published.

Of course, like the other functionality, it will fit into to the existing templating system as well as being configurable.

Example global configuration includes:-

• Ping update service URIs: (text)  
• Note: List of update service URIs like Technorati or Pingomatic to ping when a post is published.
• Ping update services when posts are updated, not just when first published. (checkbox)
• Auto-Trackback: Scan articles for links when published and attempt to notify any linked blogs.  (checkbox)
• Allow incoming trackback/pings as new comments for this blog (checkbox)
• Note: Article trackback option overrides the global option.
• Note: Subject to normal comment moderation.

Example article configuration (overrides global) includes:-

• Allow incoming trackback/pings as new comments (checkbox)
• Note: Subject to normal comment moderation.
• Allow comments (checkbox)
• Note: Overrides global comment setting.
• Trackback fields for templates. [TrackbackTitle]*, [TrackbackExcerpt]*,[TrackbackURL], [TrackbackBlogName]*
• *optional
• Note: Templates should implement 'If exists' behavior fields for optional trackback fields.
• Note: Please allow for styling trackback comments in skins.

I've already implemented the trackback functionality locally, now I just have to implement the auto-ping when an article gets posted and the ping to update external services such as Technorati.

Special thanks to one of my subscribers, Drew Wells from http://automatedqa.com/community who has graciously helped out in defining the requirements and help to sponsor the enhancement. (More details coming on a sponsorship program soon).