Pingomation

This tool checks to see if your blog has recently pinged Ping-o-Matic, or has sent a trackback to RedAlt.

RedAlt's Trackback URL is http://redalt.com/ping. If you click on it, it doesn't look special, but it does record trackbacks.

The last recorded trackback was from a blog named Ice Cream Ireland at Tue, 04 Apr 2006 17:28:12 -0400.

The current time is Thu, 28 Aug 2008 03:59:39 -0400.

How to test if your Trackbacks and Pingbacks are working

Outgoing Pings

First, test to see if outgoing trackbacks and pingbacks from your site to other sites work.
To do this, create a new post on your blog. In that post, create a link to this URL: http://redalt.com/ping

In the Trackback field of your post editor, add the RedAlt Trackback URL: http://redalt.com/ping

Publish the post in whatever manner would usually cause your blog software to send your pings, and then return to this page when they have been sent. Usually this is immediately after your post has been published to your site.

In the form on this page, enter the URL of your blog. Pingomation requires only the domain (http://www.example.com/) to retrieve from its database any trackbacks or pingbacks received from your site.

The results of the database search will appear along with the last updated date of your blog at Ping-o-Matic. (Ping-o-Matic results may require a more specific URL to be accurate.)

Incoming Pings

After you've tried testing outgoing pings, you can use RedAlt tools to test incoming pings.

Use this tool to send a trackback to your site. You will need the Trackback URL of a single post to do this - Do not use only your blog URL, since that's not how trackbacks work. You must use a special URL for trackbacks to a specific post.

When you submit the form, RedAlt will process the trackback and show you your server's response. A correct response should be a small set of response headers including a "200 OK" message, followed by a "0" on a line by itself. If you see content form your site, you have not used the correct trackback URL.

Pingbacks work similarly to trackbacks, but you need only a specific post page URL, not the trackback URL. Submit the form with your post's URL to view the response.

The Pingback technology reports specific errors if there are any. A working response will return "Successful Ping!".

You may receive a "not well formed" error. This means that your server has returned an error to RedAlt that is not in the format that it expects. Check the "Show Full Debug Info" and resubmit your URL to see the full request and response values. This should shed some light on the problem.

Often, errors are caused by sending duplicate pingbacks to the same post. You will see "Duplicate comment detected" in the full debug info if this is the case.

What is Red Alt?

Red Alt is an outlet for Owen Winkler's web tools and provides a consolidated and organized archive of other online web development tools and resources.

Blog Development Headlines

First Post Again
on 2006-09-15