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Personal Publishing

What is Trackback? (part one)

As part of an (hopefully) ongoing series – here’s the most very basic introduction as to what Trackback can do. This is not a study of how it is done – and it makes certain assumptions that I’ll go into in an upcoming lesson (assuming I get around to it) – but I think it might be enough to get that basic first point across to people who are confused by all the other stuff it can do…

(Addendum added April 2005: In a later post I came up with this short and pithy description: “When someone links to one of my posts, my post links back to them”. I think that’s just as useful as the run-through that follows.)

You can also download this image as a .pdf what_is_trackback.pdf. This diagram was created in the awesome OmniGraffle – a product of the Omni Group. I plan to use it loads more from now on…

Addendum: This is not supposed to be directed at the average weblogger of a few months standing. This is just for those newbies who’ve not managed to see it in context enough or who don’t find the name particularly descriptive.