I think more blogs should have trackbacks. What is a trackback you ask? Well the Wikipedia defines it as a system "that alerts and allows bloggers to see who has blogged about his or her posts on his or her blog. The system works by sending a 'ping' between the blogs, and there[by] providing the alert."

In other words it's a nice way to keep up with what other bloggers are saying about your posts. So far, I haven't had any trackbacks (except for the ones I pinged myself), maybe that should tell me something. Anyway there's a possibility that it's just because not enough people know how to use trackbacks. I want you to know, though, it's easy to ping a trackback - and you don't even need to have trackbacks on your site.

The process goes something like this (assuming the trackback is from Haloscan): You read something on someone's site that you would also like to write about. You then write a post on the same topic on your own site. Now you want to add a trackback, so you just copy the trackback link from the other persons site to the clipboard and ping it at Haloscan. To do that, first you must login to Haloscan and secondly Click on "Manage Trackback" in the navigation bar. There you can click on "Send a Trackback Ping". Fill out the pertinent data like the URL to ping (the one on your clipboard) and your permanent link URL and then your trackback will be on its way. It sounds a lot more complicated than it is. Really.

Haloscan has a graphical tutorial, but in the meantime here is a list of other sites that also support trackback pings:

• Bloxsom
• Blojsom
• Movable Type
• Radio Userland

Update: I got rid of the trackbacks. The problem with trackbacks is that they allow comment spammers or in this case trackback spammers to change the content of your site without your permission. I had tons of trackbacks on my stairway to heaven page and many of them were unrelated and, for whatever reason, that just really bothers me.