Phil Gyford

Over the past year I’ve been having big problems with TrackBack over at Pepys’ Diary, due to the huge number of pings sent from diary entries to items in the Background Info section (for more on how it works, read ‘Movable Type is Watching Me’). I posted a description of the problem to the Movable Type Support Forum, but here it is in case that disappears over time:

I have a weblog where most of the entries have many links to posts on one other weblog (which is run from the same instance of MT). An entry has anything from one to a couple of dozen links to a second weblog, all of which create TrackBack links.

This is all great, and works fine, except… When I save an entry in the first weblog, the entry is saved but I get stuck on the page where it sends the pings. I assume that because there’s so many of them, something is timing out. Generally, most or all of them do get sent (the TrackBack links appear in the second weblog), but the screen never refreshes.

If I go back to the Edit Entry screen and refresh it, all the pings are still listed as ‘URLs to Ping’, rather than as ‘Previous pings sent’. If I ever try to Save that entry again, it tries (and fails) to send the pings once more. Again, they all get through, but aren’t registered as having been sent.

Is there any way to stop this timing out and for it to return smoothly to the Edit Entry screen, with all the pings registered as having been sent? Thanks.

Reading that now, I’m not even sure if it makes sense.