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Linkback Plugin

Description

The linkback plugin adds Trackback and Pingback support to DokuWiki. This includes autodiscovery of track- and pingback-URLs on websites linked via an external or internal link and then sending the actual linkback as well as receiving and displaying received linkbacks. An expandable spamfilter provides protection from trackback and pingback spam. Currently, this includes

  • a check whether the count of links in the excerpt exceeds a configurable amount,
  • a check of the excerpt against the DokuWiki wordblock list,
  • a check whether the ip of the linking page is equal to that of the submitter (moderation instead of instant deletion is enabled by default for this check, you should keep it like that),
  • a check whether the linking page includes a link to the linked page in case of a trackback (where this check is not part of the protocol as compared to pingbacks) and
  • support for using the Akismet webservice to check linkbacks for spam (disabled by default, you need an Akismet API key to use this feature. You can get one by registering for a blog at Wordpress.com).
It should be noted that the badbehaviour library which is incorporated into the badbehaviour plugin does not seem to be very friendly to anything remotely resembling a trackback or a pingback1) and thus will probably lead to the linkback plugin not working as intended. I'll try to look into it though.

In case you come across any bugs, please don't hesitate to report them.

The Darcs repository of the plugin can be found here.

Updates

  • 2008/04/06
    • Fixed:
      • Akismet plugin was not called properly
      • Don't allow usage of syntax in comments
      • Minor cosmetic bugs
    • Added:
      • Logging system to log processing of incoming linkbacks. Antispam plugins can add own processing information via event-data
      • Additional antispam plugin to check if incoming trackbacks contain a link back to page
      • Option for displaying trackback URL for manual trackbacks
      • Admin component for bulk moderating linkbacks
      • URL of pinged page is now included in notification mail
    • exe/trackback.php, exe/pingback.php and action/display.php now use the pluginutils to load the tools plugin
    • Use strftime() instead of date()
    • Change to new form handling in Dokuwiki
  • 2007/04/12:
    • Receiving and displaying of received linkbacks added, sending improved
  • 2007/04/07:
    • Initial release of the first prototype

Installation

You need version 2008-05-05 for this plugin to work.

With plugin manager

Let the manager do the dirty work, just give him this link to eat: plugin-linkback.tar.gz

Without plugin manager

  1. Download the plugin: plugin-linkback.tar.gz
  2. Extract it into your dokuwiki plugin folder (eg lib/plugins)

Usage

In order to send linkbacks from a wiki node, activate the corresponding checkbox in the editform.

The receiving and display of received linkbacks is handled by the syntax plugin. The following commands are recognized:

  • ~~LINKBACK~~: Receive and display linkbacks.
  • ~~LINKBACK:closed~~: Display already received linkbacks but don't receive new ones.
  • ~~LINKBACK:off~~: Neither receive nor display linkbacks. Use this to disable linkback support in an already linkback-enabled wiki node.

Adding new spamfilters

Events

The linkback plugin introduces three new events to allow for extension of it's antispam-mechanisms by action plugins. These events are:

ACTION_LINKBACK_RECEIVED

Name ACTION_LINKBACK_RECEIVED
Data
$data['linkback'] -- The linkback data as documented below
$data['page']     -- The html source as fetched from the pinging site
$data['target']   -- The wiki page that got pinged
$data['show']     -- Whether to show the linkback, defaults to true and can 
                     be set in action plugins to moderate the linkback
$data['log']      -- An array of lines that make up the linkback log of the 
                     received linkback. Antispam plugins can add their own 
                     logging output by appending lines to this array.
Action Sets the show property of the received linkback to the value defined in the event's data and then saves the linkback.
Preventable yes
Signalled by exe/trackback.php and exe/pingback.php before saving the new linkback

Action plugins can register for this event to filter incoming linkbacks using both the actual linkback data as well as the source of the pinging page.

ACTION_LINKBACK_HAM

Name ACTION_LINKBACK_HAM
Data the linkback data
Action none
Preventable no
Signalled by the handler of the Report as Ham button of the linkback-listing (action/display.php)

In order to report a linkback as ham (e.g. to antispam plugins using classifiers), action plugins can register for this event.

ACTION_LINKBACK_SPAM

Name ACTION_LINKBACK_SPAM
Data the linkback data
Action none
Preventable no
Signalled by the handler of the Report as Spam button of the linkback-listing (action/display.php)

In order to report a linkback as spam (e.g. to antispam plugins using classifiers), action plugins can register for this event.

Linkback data

Each linkback item is represented as a hash which stores the following properties:

  • lid – internal id of the linkback
  • title – title
  • url – url
  • raw_excerpt – small excerpt of the linking page (exactly as received in the linkback)
  • excerpt – small excerpt of the linking page (html tags stripped)
  • blog_name – name of the linking page
  • favicon – url of the linking page's favicon, or false if none could be found
  • received – timestamp of the date the linkback was received
  • submitter_ip – ip of the submitter
  • submitter_useragent – useragent of the submitter
  • submitter_referer – referer of the submitter
  • type – type of the linkback, can be either trackback or pingback
  • show – true if the linkback should be visible to everyone, false if it should be visible only to admins. Antispam plugins can set this to false in order to moderate a suspicious linkback.
1) HTTP Range headers for probing for ping URLs are prohibited/forced into omitting the first byte, most of the user agents used by blog software is prohibited, …

Linkbacks

http://www.zonix.de/blog/2007/04/21/trackbacks_und_pingbacks Trackbacks und Pingbacks [zonix.de], 2007/04/22 00:58 (Pingback)
[...] Linkback Plugin [...]
 
[...] Linkback plugin by Foosel [...]
 

Discussion

Esther BrunnerEsther Brunner, 2007/04/27 12:45

Hi Gina

Thanks for your great plugin which nicely complements my Blog and Discussion plugins. May I invite you as a project member for my plugins?

Gina HaeussgeGina Haeussge, 2007/04/27 12:59

Hi Esther,

Thanks to you for those wonderful plugins! I’d happily join :-) My gmail username is – suprise ;-) – foosel.

Esther BrunnerEsther Brunner, 2007/08/11 20:47

Hi Gina

I've added you as a project member to the Blog, Discussion and Include plugins.

By the way: Today, I released version 2.5 of the Blog and Include plugins. The above patch isn't necessary any more with the new versions.

Björn KalkbrennerBjörn Kalkbrenner, 2007/12/02 20:42

Hi Gina, hi Esther,

Be careful, it took some time to realize that the “badbehaviour” plugin blocks the pingback's… It should be checked or mentioned somewhere ;)

Björn

Kim SeungYeonKim SeungYeon, 2007/12/10 17:47

Hello, Thanks for great plugin! It's very convenient!

I'm wondering where to find trackback url which can be used in blog tools, such as Wordpress and so on.

I found the url, ~~dokuwiki/lib/plugins/linkback/exe/pingback.php/~~ in X-pingback, so I used “trackback.php” instead of “pingback.php” and found it worked. (I don't know if there is shorter url for trackback)

Unfortunately some blog tools can't find this X-pingback url automatically. So showing this url can be great help. How about showing this trackback url?

fooselfoosel, 2008/04/06 11:23

This is now included in the current version.

Andreas GohrAndreas Gohr, 2007/12/10 23:37

Could someone please check if pingbacks are still blocked with the most recent badbehaviour plugin?

Enter your comment (wiki syntax is allowed):
JMYRD
snippets/dokuwiki/linkback.txt · Last modified: 2008/05/28 23:26 by foosel