OK, I think trackbacks are working now. I’m generating the necessary RDF comments so others can autodetect my trackback ping URLs, and I’m posting the URLs themselves in the left margin of each post. These links aren’t meant to be clicked, but copied by whoever is pinging manually. Unlike many existing implementations, trackbacks are equal to comments and will be posted in-line with the normal comments.

I’m still working on automating part of my own pings to other sites, but it’s not a high priority thing… I’m using Movable Type‘s sample standalone implementation meanwhile.

By the way, installing this on Mac OS X (10.2.3) isn’t completely straightforward. The trackback code uses the optional LWP Perl module, which itself needs several other modules. As I’d never messed around with Perl before, it took me some time to find the modules on CPAN and learn the necessary Terminal commands.

I read several tips warning about the LWP installer overwriting /usr/bin/head. This didn’t happen in my case; apparently saying “no” when LWP asks if you want to install test programs skips that part.

Many thanks to Dori Smith for correcting some misconceptions I initially had about trackbacks, and e-mailing me several links about the subject.