I was up late last night updating a couple of blogs and noticed that the Wordpress themes don’t include the code for trackbacks or a link to the Trackback URI. I looked at a few other Wordpress themes that were released this month and they are also missing the code for Comments Rss and Trackbacks. What’s up with that?

Trackbacks and pings are the main reason why I dont use Blogger (although I think the feature is now available) and other blogging platforms.

I’ve seen bloggers leave comments on other blogs such as “I blogged about you” when they should have just used a trackback. Trackbacks continue the discussion and connect blogs in an amazing way. Readers can click on a trackback and get another opinion or updated information on the subject.

If your theme is missing trackback tags. Here’s what you need to do.

Include this tag in your template if you want to enable auto-discovery of the trackback URI for a post.
<?php trackback_rdf(); ?>
Without it, people who wish to send a trackback to one of your posts will have to manually search for the trackback URI. (as mentioned here )

To Display the trackback URI, add these tags to your Single Post and Main Index file :

<p>Trackback URL for this post: <?php trackback_url(); ?></p>

OR

<?php if ($post->ping_status == "open") { ?>| <a href="<?php trackback_url(display); ?>" rel="trackback">Trackback</a><?php } ?>

After updating your theme, you may want to use the Test Track blog to test it out. Thanks to Alex for helping me out. Thanks Michelle Waters to for some great tips on how to make comments stand out.

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