What are Trackbacks and Why Use Them?

Because of the interactive and collegial nature of blogging, we do want to know who is saying what about something we posted or who linked our thoughts on their blog.  That’s why you should use a trackback rather than just a hyperlink.  You can put a widget on your page to find out where people at your site came from (that is which search term or location they started from) and also their country of origin.  There is a downside to trackbacks though, as they can become a magnet for spammers who want free attention to their sites.  You have the option to use the trackback feature or cancel it, just as you would with comments.

How to put in an OPML file

Go to bookmarks on the dashboard, import bookmarks.

Follow instructions from our course by going to the Steven Downes site. In brief here:

2. Create an OPML file using Stephen Downes' OPML Generator. Select a couple of RSS feeds that you'd like to package together and use this generator to generate an OPML file containing those feeds. All it takes to generate an OPML on Stephen's generator is to provide a name for your file, your name, your email address, the number of feeds you'd like in the OPML file, and finally the feed URLs. Once the generator says "success", you're done! Save the file to your computer then try and add it to your aggregator. A