This question may be related to a resolved thread.

Hey there!

I’m continually having issues sending trackback pings to sites I’m linking to. I thought it might be a Typepad issue, but the more I try to add trackback URLs for off-site posts, I see that it’s not working for *any* blog platform.

I’m running 1.6.2, but I’d figure it’s not an outright bug, as that’s probably be fixed before a version 1.6.2.

Pinging sites works fine, I just can’t get trackbacks to send (and be accepted).

Any suggestions? Thanks in advance!

jfrenette, I’m going to ask you to upgrade to the most recent version/build so that we’re working with the same code base.

Is that an option?

Has this ever worked?

I can update in the next few days, but I find it hard to believe that—if this were a bug—it hadn’t been discovered and fixed by 1.6.2.
Which leads me to believe that there must be something I’m doing wrong in twiddling the various knobs and switches involved in configuring a weblog to send trackback pings.

You know?

To answer your question: no, this feature has never worked for me. Granted, I haven’t been trying for all that long—maybe a month or so—but it’s failed every time. And I haven’t fiddled with any of the core or system code that sends and records trackback pings.

I also looked in the db and there are no saved sent trackbacks. From the code it looks like it’ll only save them if they’re successful, but I figured I’d add that info just in case it’s helpful.

Another note: I tried testing with a local install with the exact same codebase. Since I’m using MAMP locally, which uses port 8888, I had to temporarily comment a couple lines of code that check for port 80 so I could do my test. I created a post, then created a new post that pinged the first post’s trackback URL. Interestingly, when I submitted post #2 (that sends the trackback ping), the page hung and the webserver spiraled out of control. I had to kill httpd. And the trackback ping never was sent/received.
I don’t know if that experiment tells you anything, but it sure was a failure.

For what it’s worth, the site in question is hosted at EngineHosting, which is familial to you guys and may help troubleshooting. I didn’t install EE myself—they installed the core and other items for me.

Frankly, the use of trackbacks in general has been decreasing. I never use them on any of my sites or on client sites.

Which site is hosted at EngineHosting? Yours, or one you’re trying to work with trackbacks?

My site is hosted at EngineHosting.

Sure, I can understand why some may or may not want to use trackbacks, but if it’s a feature that’s offered as part of ExpressionEngine, I’d still want to know that it worked and I was using it correctly. If it didn’t work, I would imagine they’d remove the feature, no?

I’m setting up sheblogs.com to support trackbacks, but it’ll take a while to get everything working.

While we’re waiting on that, have you seen these KB entries?

What are Trackbacks

My Trackbacks Aren’t Being Sent

I’m able to get trackbacks going between two of my EECore sites.

The key was to set up a trackbacks page which gave me the correct item to ping.

You can test at:

Heptite.com

SheBlogs.com

Just tried making a post that tracked back to your http://heptite.com/ post (trackback URL: http://heptite.com/trackback/2/)

No dice. tried it on my development server, as well as on my production site.

Thank you very much for going through the hassle of setting these up for testing.

I have everything set up correctly as far as I can tell from the field labels in CP Admin and the documentation. I guess my next test is creating a PHP page for it to hit and recording what EE is actually sending.

Very, very weird.

Any other suggestions, other than updating to a newer build? Again, I can’t imagine that an issue like this hasn’t been discovered before.

Here’s a foreach dump of the key/value pairs EE is sending in my trackback from my development environment:

header information sent
Host = localhost
Content-type = application/x-www-form-urlencoded
Content-length = 159
User-Agent = ExpressionEngine/1.6.2
Connection = close

post values sent
url = http://localhost:8888/tracks/trackbacks-test-post/
title = Trackbacks Test Post
blog_name = tracks
excerpt = I am a test!
charset = utf-8

All of this looks correct. So…. It appears that EE is sending what it’s supposed to send. I’m not sure what’s going wrong—whether it’s something on my (EE) side or with the sites I’m trying to trackback to. I still get the “Unknown Error” after submitting a post, and my trackbacks still aren’t registering on people’s sites.

Thanks again for your help

Trackback Test

I just sent a trackback from my WAMP local host.. worked for me..

Can you post the unknown error link you’re getting?

There’s actually no link—it just says “Unknown Error” in the CP Admin after I publish.

The following trackback pings were not accepted:
http://www.sheblogs.com/index.php/site/trackbacks/28/ - Unknown Error

That’s what I wanted to see.

You’re link to track back to me is supposed to be:

The link you put in earlier is the wrong one. That page has what the link to trackback should be.

I’ll widen the form field so you can see it easier.

And would you look at that—it worked!

Well, this is all a real headscratcher, but I guess it’s not EE’s fault after all. Crazy stuff!

Sue, thank you very much for taking all this time/effort in troubleshooting this with me. i greatly appreciate it. If the conclusion is “There’s something other than EE at work and at fault here”, then I guess this topic is closed.

Thanks again, and have a great weekend.

Glad it’s working for you… I just hadn’t fiddled with it enough to get thing working before.

Closing thread.

Hi Sue,

Does trackbacks only work one EE site another EE site.

Pls tell me.

Thanks.

tsoares, this thread should have been closed back in July, so I am doing it now. Please start a new one if you have any issues. That said, trackbacks generally work with other, non-EE sites as well.