Most blogging platforms allow the author to enable or disable commenting and trackbacks. Many bloggers may not even know what they are, however.
Commenting simply means that you allow your readers to post comments about your posts. In some cases, you may wish to require them to register as “members” of your blog, or you may just choose to let anyone comment, subject to moderation (i.e., approval by you).
The up side of this is that your blog will contain more entries, and perhaps some lively discussion, or comments that give you ideas for further posts. It makes your blog operate a bit like a forum, and other people are building your content in the process.
The down side is “comment spam” … people who go around posting comments to other blogs just to get a link back to their own website or blog, regardless of whether they have anything meaningful to say, or their site is even related to the blog they comment on.
The solution, though a bit time-consuming, is to set your blog up so that all comments are “moderated”, meaning that you have to review and manually approve them before they appear on your blog.
You can simplify this process by installing either or both of the spam filtering plugins Akismet and WP Spam-Free. This combination blocks something like 100+ spam comments per week on each of my blogs, and allows a small number through for moderation, so you can see their value.
“Trackback” and the closely related “Pingback” are features first introduced by MoveableType a few years ago, but now included in virtually all major blogging software.
Basically, they provide a mechanism for one blogger to alert another blogger that he/she has mentioned the other in his/her own blog. It does so by sending a “ping” to the blog that was mentioned.
The main benefit of “trackbacks” is to provide easy links between blogs, and to develop the sense of community and sharing among bloggers.
Learn more about trackbacks and pingbacks.
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