Trackback Linkback Wrong

[The Humanaught]

Greetings all, day four of the Great Pligg Upgrade and I've found a problem that I think is easy to fix for someone with some PHP knowledge. That person, sadly, is not me.

Basically, the trackback is working fine in that when a user submits a new story, and the Trackback field is filled out properly in the submission, the PLIGG SITE sends a trackback to the original SOURCE site. This is particularly useful for sites that PLIGG a lot of blogs -- as the trackback often appears in the comments, giving viewers of the comments a chance to click over to the PLIGG SITE (added traffic,etc) via a linkback URL to the PLIG SITE's story page relating to the trackback'd post.

Ok, I know that's a bit confusing, as it literally goes in circles - but try following, as the problem comes next:

Whereas the setting in the Config2.php file gives a name to the commenter (say, PLIGG SITE NAME), it does nothing to change the commenter's URL (say, http://www.PLIGGSITE.com). The settings for this, I think, are in the libs/trackback.php file.

Currently it is set up as this:
[base_url]/story/story_id (ie. www.pliggsite.com/story/512)

But it should be:
[base_url]/[pligg_subdir]/story/story_id (ie. www.pliggsite.com/pliggsubdir/story/512)

It's currently not set up for sites that have installed Pligg in a subdirectory of their main site.

Can anyone suggest how to fix this? Confirm that it does indeed centre around the libs/trackback.php file?

Thanks a load!!

[The Humanaught]

Hey, so if you're having problems with this too... here are the things I had to do to get Trackbacks working on my site - installed with v8.1.0.0.010.01.1.11.2.3.4..5.4 (alright... I made up everything after the 8.1.0 part... c'mon guys... get the darn thing out of Beta!).

1) In LIBS/TRACKBACK.PHP: I read someplace else that I needed to add

global $trackbackURL;

in around line 71 of libs/trackback.php.

Before:

 // Send a Trackback
    function send() {
        if (empty($this->url))
                return; 
  

After:

 // Send a Trackback
    function send() {
        global $trackbackURL;
        if (empty($this->url))
                return; 
  

2) In LIBS/UTILS.PHP: This was what was catching me up in the post above. #1 will get it so the trackbacks are sent to the source site, but if you're Pligg is installed in a subdir on your site, the linkback URLs will be wrong.

So, after staring at the computer and begging it to just work for hours... finally I followed the wires back to their sources and realized I just needed to change the permalink setting in the libs/utils.php file (in around line 162/163).

Before:

 function get_permalink($id) {
    return "http://".get_server_name()."/story/$id/";
} 
  

After:

 function get_permalink($id) {
    return "http://".get_server_name()."/YOURPLIGGSUBDIR/story/$id/";
} 
  

I've tested it on my site (see sig.) and it works. Hope that helps anyone else that might be staring at their monitor trying to fix this, and only getting a silent hum in return.

[kbeeveer46]

I haven't tested this but the second "after" box can be fixed by using a variable instead of hardcoding your subdirectory.

 function get_permalink($id) {
    return "http://".get_server_name() $my_pligg_base ."/story/$id/";
} 
  

[SeanW]

I just was tracing a problem and found that the url sent in the trackback is not the canonical url of the story.

ie

The real url of the story is http://pliggsite.com/cat/mystory

what gets pinged to the remote site is

http://pliggsite.com/story/42

This is fine for web users because anyone going to /story/42 gets 301'ed to /cat/mystory. However, some blogs will automatically request the url to make sure there is a backlink (as a spam check). In the case I was looking at, PHP Spam Karma got the 301 redirect but didn't follow it so it got dropped.

Sean

[SeanW]

I've been tracing this one further, is there any way of using getmyurl() instead of get_permalink from within libs/trackback.php?

[kbeeveer46]

SeanW, are you talking about this line?

$url = urlencode(get_permalink($this->link));

We actually fixed the permalink function the other night http://pligg.svn.sourceforge.net/vie...89&pathrev=590

[SeanW]

SeanW, are you talking about this line?

$url = urlencode(get_permalink($this->link));

We actually fixed the permalink function the other night http://pligg.svn.sourceforge.net/vie...89&pathrev=590

Thanks, that's the one!

Sean