Trackback and xml?

[dwh]

Here's some suggestions:

1. XML feed.
2. Trackback (like movable type has...dunno how feasible it is, but maybe?)

[Raz Meister]

What could the XML feed be used for? Can't think of anything useful.

What is Trackback?

[leadZERO]

Everyone confused raise their hand...

*puts his hand up*

Could you explain what you mean by trackback?

[dwh]

Not 100% sure of the mechanism but when someone using movable type posts a link to someone else's post using movable type..the system detects it and has a little link list of those sites...it's kind of like a recip linking deal...the thing is, how do they do it? I think there may be a central place that gets logged into? I doubt they are using referers?

[Raz Meister]

Heres more info: http://www.movabletype.org/docs/mtmanual_trackback.html

[tubedogg]

Movable Type's TrackBack system allows peer-to-peer communication and conversations between blogs. Imagine that you write about a movie you just saw in an entry on your Movable Type-powered blog. Another MT blogger reads your entry, and wants to write an entry referencing your original post. He could just comment on your blog, but he'd like to keep the post in his own database and host it on his site.

Using TrackBack, the other blogger can automatically send a ping to your blog, indicating that he has written an entry referencing your original post. This accomplishes two things:

On your site, you can automatically list all sites that have referenced a particular post, allowing visitors to your site to read the response on the other user's blog.

It provides a firm, explicit link between his entry and yours, as opposed to an implicit link (like a referrer log) that depends upon outside action (someone clicking on the link to your entry).

You can use TrackBack for more than just communication on particular entries, however. You can also associate TrackBack pings URLs with categories in your blog. Whenever you post an entry to that category, the URLs you have associated will automatically be notified of your post. This allows remote sites to keep a repository of references to posts all around the web.

For example, if you run a site about Perl, you might want to provide a repository of links to Perl articles on other weblogs. Using TrackBack, you can allow other weblogs to ping a particular category in your own blog, whenever a new entry is posted that pertains to this category.

These are just examples of TrackBack usage. TrackBack itself is a framework for peer-to-peer communication between weblogs; it can track cross-weblog discussions, it can provide remote content repositories, it can emulate guest authoring, etc. The technical side of TrackBack is very simple: when you want to notify a remote site of your existence, you send a ping to that site. The format of these pings (simple HTTP GET requests) is discussed below. In the Movable Type implementation of TrackBack, we've added password protection to category pings, IP banning, automatic RSS output, and email notification of new pings.

[dwh]

yup! :)

So what do you think? Is this feasible in general release? Or even a hack?

[dwh]

Originally posted by Razzie
What could the XML feed be used for? Can't think of anything useful.

I've had the idea for this so long ago...and wanted to write a hack but alas I'm so busy I didn't even come close to having the time...but there are a lot of uses...go to weblogs.com for one idea...

I was actually thinking of doing a portal for forums where there are categories and by having a hack allowing forums to use xml to allow the portal to ping all the forums for their latest posts titles and links, you have one huge usenet style system...

Since it doesn't look like I'll have time to do it this century...if someone else has the time, inclination and resources to do it...have at it...

VB could take the lead if you guys want to...personally I believe the potential is tremendous and it can take the forums to a whole new level...

everyone using vb would get a lot more traffic....and bring more people into the fold....

This technology is revolutionary...but no one built the front end around it quite right yet...at least not on the forum level...but bloggers are using it pretty nicely...

[dwh]

Blogs are really hot...and some of the articles discussing the effect on google by googlebombs by bloggers just illustrates their power.

1. The Blogger "netiquette" makes them very powerful. A typical successful blogger will scan sites like http://fark.com http://weblogs.com and http://daypop.com and see what are hot topics other bloggers are talking about...then make a post about it linking to a fellow blogger...that fellow blogger will see who linked to him, and offer a link back...everyone gets more traffic, which is the lifeblood of a blogger.

2. This "community" empowers all bloggers.

3. This peer-to-peer idea allows people to come up w/ innovative portals around the data passing from blogger to blogger...like daypop.com did. A new portal (like blogosphere) idea pops up almost every day...

No forum has taken any of these ideas and applied them to our forum community idea....and I believe there's room for this to become big...

Having a built in ability to syndicate our content, helps provide relevant content to certain sites and return traffic to us....allowing us to syndicate others' content can be helpful to us too...

Having a mutually beneficial "netiquette" to send each other traffic would be cool...most of us have a "chit chat" type section including vb...and people tend to discuss the "latest" on the net...so having a trackback style feature could be good for all of us if VB standardized the way it was done...and the community developed our own netiquette...

I don't think I'm explaining my vision that well...and perhaps you need to have worked with the other mediums to know what I mean, but all I can say is the untapped potential here is great...I hope vb is the first one to think about it and implement some features...usually new features grow out of hacks but for this to work in the big way I think it can, the tools would probably have to come from vb itself....

[Raz Meister]

It sounds like a good idea. I'm going to research this some more.