1
Aine
TrackBack Standalone
  • 2004/1/14 22:55

  • Aine

  • Just popping in

  • Posts: 21

  • Since: 2002/7/10


I'm investigating incorporating MovableType's TrackBack in my News module's articles. I don't want to use the trackback module that's being developed, I want to configure the Standalone TrackBack script to work with News.

I think $storyid from article.php is the variable I need to use for TrackBack. Am I right in thinking that?

2
Aine
Re: TrackBack Standalone
  • 2004/1/15 23:32

  • Aine

  • Just popping in

  • Posts: 21

  • Since: 2002/7/10


*bump*

In addition, I'd like to know if anyone else has yet installed and modified XOOPS to use MovableType's Standalone Trackback. If not, I guess I'll be the first, eh?

3
Aine
Re: TrackBack Standalone
  • 2004/1/16 19:32

  • Aine

  • Just popping in

  • Posts: 21

  • Since: 2002/7/10


Ok, I got TrackBack *half-working* on my XOOPS 2.0.5.2 installation. It can send pings out, but it can't receive them yet.

The following variables are needed to get TrackBack to work:
TrackBack ID "storyid={<$storyid>}"
Entry Permalink "storyid={<$storyid>}"
Entry Title "???something???={<$story.title>}"


The tags by themselves (without something=) do not work and simply render as curley-q brackets with the variable inside of them. Calling it with just the dollar sign tag doesn't work either.

I'm combing thru templates trying to figure out that last one, but so far, not having much luck.

It's that last one giving me a headache and if any of the Developers could give me a clue, I'd be a very happy camper, indeed. I'd be willing to write this up as a tutorial for implementing TrackBack in XOOPS News module, if I could only get this to work all the way.

Having gotten it to work half-way (it can send pings out, but can't receive them), I'm doing pretty good with it so far.

Please, can anyone shed some light on this??


PS : I don't know about the rest of you, but if you really want XOOPS to connect with the rest of the blogging world, TrackBack and Pings should be a priority. Otherwise, XOOPS is pretty much like how blogger is (a blogging app without built-in comments). Preferably, we could get TrackBack built into the XOOPS core, but until that happens, TrackBack Standalone is really the only option. This is why I am trying to implement TrackBack Standalone with XOOPS News Module.

4
Aine
Re: TrackBack Standalone
  • 2004/1/16 22:31

  • Aine

  • Just popping in

  • Posts: 21

  • Since: 2002/7/10


As posted at the MovableType support forums (reposted here so you can see what's going on):

Quote:
This may sound crazy, or it may sound brilliant, depending on how you look at it... but I'm trying to implement Standalone TrackBack with the News Module of [URL=https://xoops.org/]XOOPs[/URL] CMS. I'm about 3/4ths of the way to making it work, too!

However, I am having a small problem. The script does just fine sending OUT TrackBack pings (tested it on my MT blogs). I cannot, however, get it to receive TrackBack pings. When I try, I get this error:

[CODE]Ping 'http://www.mydomain.net/content/cgi-bin/tb.cgi/storyid_1' failed: HTTP error: 500 Can't connect to www.mydomain.net:80 (Timeout)[/CODE]

I've checked, double-checked, and triple-checked all CHMOD permissions (this is a Linux server running on Apache). Permissions are all correct. I've checked the htaccess file, it's fine. MT on this server works perfectly, too.

The variables I've assigned to TB (specific to XOOPs) are as follows:

[CODE]<!--
<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/">
<rdfescription
rdf:about="storyid=<{$story.id}>"
dc:title="itemtitle=<{$story.title}>"
dc:identifier="storyid=<{$story.id}>" />
trackback:ping="http://www.mydomain.net/content/cgi-bin/tb.cgi/storyid=<{$story.id}>"
</rdf:RDF>
-->[/CODE]

One thing that is questionable is the dc:title variable. It tends to output the Topic : Title of the News story in the form of two HTML'd links. I've posted at the XOOPs forum asking for clarification of what that variable should be, in the hopes that that might be the main problem. I haven't gotten a response yet (still waiting).

The other two variables (using the same itemid) work fine. They have to be in that format in order to output the proper ID for the News "story" otherwise they just output the variables themselves and that, obviously, won't work.

It also appears that Standalone TrackBack is not writing any files to the tb_data or tb_rss directories, as it should do. There is nothing preventing TB from doing so, as far as I can tell, there is just nothing in those directories. CGI scripts can (according to my webhosts) run from anywhere on the server. All Standalone TrackBack files are in the proper directories and permissions are set correctly, as stated in the installation instructions. When checking for the TB ping url on a specific News story, I do get the properly formatted popup window with the TB url listed there.

Needless to say, I am currently stumped at this point. 3/4ths of the way to implementing TrackBack in a branch of the 'nuke tree. If I could make this work, it would give CMS developers some idea of what TrackBack is all about, and possibly open up all those 'nuke branches to being able to build TrackBack into their CMS's, connecting them to the rest of the blog world. Personally, I think that would be fantastic.

If anyone can be of help to me, I'd very much appreciate it.

Aine


*I've obscured the name of the domain I'm working on to preserve my privacy until I get it ready to open to the public. There is currently nothing to be seen there anyway, just some Lorem Ipsum.

5
Aine
Re: TrackBack Standalone
  • 2004/1/17 3:51

  • Aine

  • Just popping in

  • Posts: 21

  • Since: 2002/7/10


Update...

Found out the tags I was using were wrong for rdf.

<!--
<
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="<{$xoops_url}>/modules/news/article.php?storyid=<{$story.id}>"
                
dc:title="<{$story.title}>"
                
dc:identifier="<{$xoops_url}>/modules/news/article.php?storyid=<{$story.id}>" />
           
trackback:ping="<{$xoops_url}>/cgi-bin/tb.cgi/storyid=<{$story.id}>"
</rdf:RDF>
 -->


rdf:about is now correct
dc:title is incorrect
dc:identifier is now correct
trackback:ping may or may not be correct (I may need to move the trackback cgi script directly into the modules/news directory to make it work, but I'm not sure at this point).

dc:title is proving to be a major problem because XOOPS outputs the title as Topic : Title with two url links. The output needs to be a plain-text title of the story. I have seen no tag in XOOPS that will output just a story title without putting a link in it.

Still scouring php files and templates, trying to find something useful.

6
darapera
Re: TrackBack Standalone
  • 2004/7/28 5:33

  • darapera

  • Just popping in

  • Posts: 67

  • Since: 2003/7/22


I'm really really interested in this. Have you got this to work? I use News extensively and am quite dissapointed trackback is lacking and I don't want to use a blog module because I use w.Bloggar with XOOPS News.

7
Aine
Re: TrackBack Standalone
  • 2005/1/9 1:38

  • Aine

  • Just popping in

  • Posts: 21

  • Since: 2002/7/10


No, I never did get it to work properly and after weeks of trying, I finally gave up on it.

Trackback is going to need to be built into the core functionality of XOOPS (if it hasn't been already).

8
spiff
Re: TrackBack Standalone
  • 2005/1/21 17:51

  • spiff

  • Just popping in

  • Posts: 47

  • Since: 2003/4/16


Darn.

This is invaluable, and is a must for CMS to get proper traction. If I get a little free time, I'd be willing to take over from what you have. Has all your work in progress on this subject been posted here? I went over to dev.xoops.org, but there's nothing on ping/trackbacks available...

I'm checking out the trackback module now. Have you tried it?

Eric

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