Get Started With Pingbacks

How are Pingbacks Created?

To create pingbacks, all you really have to do is link to another post.  

Behind the scenes, a pingback notification will be sent to the other blog, prompting the other site owner to approve the pingback.  

It’s very much like a comment awaiting moderation – the only difference is that it was automatically created.

How to Approve Pingbacks?

Check the main WordPress user interface and click on Comments, then filter by Pings.

Once there, you can approve pingbacks one by one, or en masse.

How to Delete Pingbacks?

If you’d like to remove, or delete a pingback, or several pingbacks, login to the main WordPress user interface and click on Comments, then filter by Pings.

Once there, you can delete pingbacks one by one, or several at once.

What is rel=”pingback”?

In HTML, links are signified with the <a>, each having rel=”attribute” where attributes can be one or more of several different values.

Rel values indicate the relationship of the target resource to the resource on which they appear thanks Microformats for that explanation.

Here’s a relatively full list of popular link rel= attributes:

• alternate: signifies this is the alternative version of the content such as a page destined for print, translation or mirroring
• author: signifies who is the author of the content
• bookmark: signifies that alternative content is a when referring to related content
• dns-prefetch: signifies the URL should have DNS resolution performed before the current content has finished loading
• external: signifies the link points to content on a different website
• help: signifies help content which relates to the current content
• icon: signifies an icon file to import which will represent the current content
• license: signifies allowed usage and ownership or copyright details about the content
• next: signifies the content is ongoing and what is the next/following content in a multi-document content
• nofollow: signifies to some search engines that their crawler shouldn’t follow that link, and shouldn’t pass “link juice” to the target site
• noreferrer: signifies that a browser should omit the HTTP referer header when following the link
• pingback: signifies that the content can accept pingbacks and what is the URL of the pingback server (absolute URI of the pingback XML-RPC server)
• preconnect: signifies that a browser should attempt to connect before page load completes
• prefetch: signifies that the destination content should be pulled in before page load completes and that the target should be loaded into cache
• preload: signifies that the target content should be fetched and cached in the background, before current page load completes
• prerender: signifies that the target content should be loaded in the background, before current page load completes
• prev: signifies the content has a predecessor, or previous page, and that is the previous content in the multi-document content
• search: signifies that there is a search function for the content and where it resides
• stylesheet: signifies that there is a stylesheet that needs to be imported that’s associated with formatting the current content
• tag: signifies that there is a keyword tag for the content

For a more complete listing of rel= values, check out the microformats page, which also identifies the HTML/XHTML versions and what microformats are related: microformats.org/wiki/existing-rel-values

Notes:

  <a> tags are typically used like:
  <a href=”https://www.someserver.com/” rel=”external, nofollow”>a bit of target information</a>

You can use one or more attributes in the rel=”attribute, attribute, attribute”, provided they are comma separated and quote encapsulated.

Did you know?

Pingbacks can be marked up via the HTML rel=”pingback” attribute, but that information can also be passed along via the HTTP header as:

X-Pingback: charlie.example.com/pingback/xmlrpc

Thanks to the archive at cweiske.de for a good example of the HTTP header which has passed the X-Pingback details.

Conclusion

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