Blogging 101

drewprops

I need a lesson about Blogging.

Specifically, can somebody explain to me:



1) "backtracking": what is it?

2) as a reader, how do you keep up with the main blog and the backtracks?

3) what's the etiquette for adding track-backs, and how do people do it? Technically I mean. (Must they also be bloggers?)

4) how does your blog "accept" and post comments from other people?



What are some other blog-centric issues that non-bloggers might not be aware of at this point in time?



thanks!

chucker

All of your questions refer to feedback. When you write a blog article, often you'd love your readers to show up and say "couldn't agree more" - or maybe the exact opposite, to tell you an entirely different opinion. This is referred to as "Feedback".



There are two basic methods: Comments let readers post short comments, possibly with their name, e-mail address and web site, and they'll be visible underneath your entry after clicking a link.



The other method was first implemented as "Trackback" and later as "Pingback". Pingback uses a more interesting approach, but is less common. Trackback is getting more and more common as more and more blogging software supports it. Both work as follows (example):



The author of blog A posts something about the Iraq war, possibly referring to a news article and enhancing it with his or her own thoughts.



The author of blog B notices the article and posts his own, referring to the article in blog A. His software sends a Trackback to blog A. Blog A gets a Trackback item and links to it (i.e. to the new article in blog .



Cool thing.

drewprops

Wow, that's cool.



So if I used Bloxsom, I wonder if it has that....must go read docs.