Ping this!

Harvey of Bad Example did a whole post on when to and when not to do a trackback. This led to a conversation about how to install the auto detection code for Haloscan. The code allows programs that use an auto detection feature for trackback pings to work with blogs that have installed Haloscan comments. This code doesn’t really help bloggers like myself; I still have to do the manual trackbacks. It does help all the bloggers that are using programs with auto detection to quickly and easily leave me a trackback. So I, from some nudging from Harvey, looked into the code for this.

Now I’ll admit I made this ten times more difficult then it needed to be because I didn’t pay attention to the code and left in a bit that I shouldn't have. So I thought what I would do is show all my fellow Haloscan users what they need to do so that others can more easily ping them.

So here it is:

First. Find the section of your template that has the code for your Haloscan comments. Found it? It should be in a section between the bit of code <Blogger> and </Blogger>. You should see some code that looks something like this:

<a class="comment-link" href="http://www.haloscan.com/comments/YOUR HALOSCAN ID/<$BlogItemNumber$>/" alt="Comment" onclick="HaloScan('<$BlogItemNumber$>'); return false;" target="_self"><script type="text/javascript">postCount('<$BlogItemNumber$>'); </script><noscript>Comments</noscript></a> <a class="comment-link" href="http://www.haloscan.com/tb/YOUR HALSOCAN ID/<$BlogItemNumber$>/" alt="Trackback" onclick="HaloScanTB('<$BlogItemNumber$>'); return false;" target="_self"><script type="text/javascript">postCountTB('<$BlogItemNumber$>'); </script><noscript>Trackback</noscript></a>

This piece of code may not be exactly the same as it is on your page, it all depends on your set up.

Second, cut and paste this piece of code on the line RIGHT after it.

<!-- Begin trackback -->
<rdf:RDF xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"
xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
xmlns:trackback="http://madskills.com/public/xml/
rss/module/trackback/">
<rdf:Description
rdf:about="<$BlogItemPermalinkURL$>"
dc:identifier="<$BlogItemPermalinkURL$>"
dc:title="<$BlogItemTitle$>"
trackback:ping="http://haloscan.com/tb/YOUR HALOSCAN ID/<$BlogItemNumber$>" />
</rdf:RDF>
<!-- End trackback -->


Change the bold AND italics part of the code to reflect YOUR haloscan ID. Once you have made this change and you save your template it should work just fine. If you still have problems, feel free to contact me and I’ll be more then happy to give you a hand. I hope this helps!

UPDATE: It appears that Ogre also posted on this phenominon. So if you want another reference go see his post regarding Haloscan Trackbacks.