Just a little update if you happen to use this sites interlinking. One of the WordPress features I’ve made heavy use of on this site over the years is internal Pingbacks, also called linkbacks or trackbacks.
In the articles, I will often provide links to various related topics so readers can read further if something is not clear or they want to explore more. I often go into advanced topics that may be unfamiliar and there is some terminology I use in ways that’s a little different than might be typical.
Those links to prior articles would then show up in the comments of the prior article as forward links or “pingbacks”. When you read the linked article, you’ll see a link back to the first article plus other related articles that have also linked to it. This allows a reader to follow the thread of ideas, like a mini-Internet across the site. Some of the older reference articles like this one show quite a few examples.
However, Pingbacks have been somewhat flaky. Sometimes, it took re-saving a new article dozens of times to get WP to discover most of the pingbacks. And then, with the most recent upgrade, internal pingbacks died altogether.
I’ve not seen any explanation but abuse of the feature has become an issue for search engines and it may also be related to the fight against pingback spam.
Articles from August 9th, 2014 forward no longer place pingbacks on linked articles. They’re all just one way now – links to the past.
I will make a point to provide forward links to key article updates, like the recent followup to The Experience so the thread is more apparent. But otherwise, use Search and Categories and Key Posts to follow subject threads now. And of course, the many links inside the articles also maintain an internal web.
Davidya
Last Updated on November 8, 2014 by