Participating in Indiana Blogs!

The idea behing this site is to collocate posts from Indiana bloggers in one place, so that we can all take in and enjoy the collective output of our community. The basic technology behind this is called pinging and involves you and/or your blogging software telling this site that you've posted something new. This particular implementation of pinging is based on the TrackBack feature, which is implemented in Movable Type. Do not fear if you are using software that doesn't offer a ping feature like TrackBack. There is another way. Read on.

If you already know what you're doing, then the only piece of information you need is this one, the TrackBack URL:

http://openstacks.net/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/64

If your blogging software has a pinging feature (particularly Movable Type)...

To explain how to set up Movable Type to automatically ping this site when you post, I'm going to direct you to the very well done tutorial featured on Blogroots Blogpopuli.

You'll see on that page options for pinging on a category basis (for example, if you only want to submit posts from your "Indiana Life" category) and also for pinging on a post by post basis. You can make sure all of your posts appear on this blog by repeating the category instructions for each of your categories. I encourage this as I would like to reflect the diversity represented by the Indiana blogosphere, so all topics are welcome.

To TrackBack without Movable Type...

Post first. Then you can use a simple form to notify us. Before you go to the form, find the permalink to that particular post (often linked from the post's timestamp). If your software doesn't provide permalinks (Blogger, for instance), then your main URL will suffice. You may want to keep the post accessible while you fill out the form as some cutting and pasting is necessary to provide an excerpt (up to 255 characters).

The form is located here. Bookmark the page so you can return to it easily in the future. The Trackback URL is listed above. Enter the blog name and the post title. The entry URL is the permalink. Cut and paste up to the first 255 characters of your post into the Entry Excerpt. Then submit the form. That's it.