What are trackbacks and pingbacks in WordPress?

In the WordPress ecosystem, trackbacks and pingbacks are legacy features designed to facilitate communication between blogs. They serve as notifications when one website links to another, thus promoting networking within the blogging community. However, their importance has diminished over time due to the increase in spam and the development of web technologies.

What are trackbacks?

Trackbacks are manual notifications sent from one blog to another to indicate that a post has been linked to content on the recipient’s website. This process includes:

• Identifying the trackback URL: The author finds the trackback URL provided by the target blog post.
• Sending the trackback: The author pastes this URL into the field provided when publishing their post.
• Notification and approval: The recipient blog receives the trackback, which usually contains an excerpt of the linked post, and can display it as a comment.

While trackbacks played an important role in acknowledging sources and encouraging discussion in the early days of blogging, they have since become prone to spam, leading many to disable them.

What are pingbacks?

Pingbacks are automatic notifications that are sent when one WordPress blog links to another. The process works as follows:

• Linking: an author publishes a post that contains a link to another WordPress blog.
• Automatic notification: WordPress sends a pingback to the linked blog, provided pingbacks are enabled on both sites.
• Verification and display: The recipient blog verifies the existence of the link and displays the pingback as a comment after confirmation.

Compared to trackbacks, pingbacks are less susceptible to spam due to their verification process.

Trackbacks vs. pingbacks

Management of trackbacks and pingbacks in WordPress

Global activation/deactivation:

• Navigate to Settings > Discussion in your WordPress dashboard.
• Activate or deactivate “Allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks) for new articles”.
• Click on Save changes.

Activate/deactivate for individual posts:

• Edit the desired post.
• Activate or deactivate the option “Allow trackbacks and pingbacks on this page” in the Discussion section.
• Update the post.

*Note: If the “Discussion” section is not visible, click on “Screen options” in the top right-hand corner and activate it

Conclusion

Trackbacks and pingbacks were pioneering features that allowed blogs to communicate with each other and validate each other’s content. However, with the advent of advanced content management systems and the proliferation of spam, their usefulness has diminished. Modern bloggers often rely on alternative methods such as social media and direct linking to connect with their audience and other bloggers. Although these features are retained in WordPress for compatibility reasons, it is advisable to review their relevance to your site’s needs and consider disabling them to ensure optimal performance and security.