January 20, 2006
Testing sending of auto-trackback pings
WordPress has the capability (if you choose to enable it in the Options|Discussion) to automatically send a ping to any article that you reference within your post, saving you the time of having to paste the trackback URL into the Trackbacks section of the Write Post screen.
As many people have reported problems with both sending and receiving of trackbacks in wp 2.0, I’m doing my own testing to see if I am experiencing any of those problems on my server (because right now I feel like I’m in limbo — I have some new blogs that I want to create, and I’d prefer to start them out with WordPress 2.0 rather than having to start on 1.5.2 and later do a major upgrade once they’ve gotten the kinks out of WP 2.0 - but I can’t create a blog using WP 2.0 if trackbacks (both sending and receiving of them) aren’t fully working on my blog b/c I consider that to be a major aspect of blogging.
SO, we know other people are having tons of problems with trackbacks (check the support forums, like this post, and this post, and this post, for example) - the question is whether this problem is universal to all WP 2.0 users, or does it pertain to problems with specific server setups - and if that’s the case, is it fully functioning on MY server?
In my previous post I tested manually sending a trackback to a typepad blog, as well as the receiving of a trackback from a typepad blog.
Now I’m going to test the sending of an ‘auto-discovery trackback’ to both a typepad blog, a WP 1.5.2 blog, and a WP 2.0 blog and will then report the results..
Here goes nothing…
Here’s a reference to a typepad post on how to get a free psp and a free xbox 360.
Here’s a reference to a WordPress 1.5.2 post on how to tell if your pool has a leak
Here’s a reference to a WordPress 2.0 post on this blog (and thus the same server) about testing and receiving trackback pings with Wordpress 2.0
Here’s a reference to a WordPress 2.0 post on another server about WordPress 2.0 - the good and the bad
Now I’m going to publish and see whether my trackback pings get sent appropriately to any or all of the blog posts referenced here…crossing my fingers…
Results 1 minute after posting: both of the WordPress 2.0 blogs immediately showed my trackback pings. The typepad blog and the WP 1.5.2 blog still have not had the trackbacks show up, but there could be a delay - it has, after all, only been one minute, so for now the jury is still out. But it is clear that I can at least automatically send trackback pings to other WP 2.0 blogs. Although that’s not enough, but again, we need to give it some time..
Okay, I went and took a shower, did some straightening up around the house, and came back 45 minutes later and…still no showing of any of the ‘auto-trackback pings’ on any blogs other than other WP 2.0 blogs. BUMMER. So I guess the auto-trackback part, at least on my installation, is only working from WP 2.0 to WP 2.0. At least I know that on my install I do still have the option of manually sending the trackback (which is something that has to be done every time in TypePad anyway, but I sure hope the WP team gets this fixed real soon as it’s sure nice to have WP automatically send the trackback pings for you..)
I then came across a post which suggested running wp-admin/execute-pings.php manually to make sure the pings get sent. Did that. Still no trackback pings on any blogs other than WP 2.0.
