Add Trackback to Your Blogger Blog: The Easy Way

I recently posted my reasons for reconsidering my original decision to not add Trackback to my New Blogger Blog. If you want to know why you can read about it at the bottom of this post.

But that in itself posed another problem because Haloscan doesn’t offer the code or any tutorial how to do it for New Blogger. Instead, they have an automatic installation widget.

So why is that a problem? Well, in my case I only wanted trackback, not comments. But the auto-install widget unfortunately disables Blogger’s comments and installs both of Haloscan’s comments and trackback. Stink!

So this is how I did it if you want to just install just trackback and leave your Blogger comments alone:

1. First make a backup of your template by downloading it to your hard drive and put it in a safe place. You can do that in your Blogger Dashboard “Edit HTML” section of your “Template” menu. Click on “Download Full Template” to save it.

2. Log into your Haloscan account (or create one if you haven’t already) and click on the “Install” menu. There you will find a list of blog platforms (Blogger is the first one). Make sure the “Blogger or Blogspot” box is chosen as well as the “Display Trackback Code“ box.

3. Click on “Next” and you should come to the page with instructions for the “Blogger Installation Wizard”. Follow the instructions how to download a copy of your current template from Blogger to your hard drive. Then click on “Browse” to upload it to Haloscan.

4. Click on the button “Upload Blogger Template” and you will be taken to Step 2 of the “Blogger Installation Wizard”.

5. Click on the “Download Blogger Template” button and it will prompt you to download the new template to your hard drive. It will probably be called something like “Upload_this_to_Blogger.xml”.

6. Now this is where we diverge from the Haloscan instructions. If you want to use both of Haloscan’s comments and trackback features you do not need to proceed any further. Just follow the instruction how to upload your new template into Blogger. But if you just want to use trackback then please continue reading.

Instead of uploading the new template code to Blogger, copy the code from the file (”Upload_this_to_Blogger.xml”)  into something like Notepad that will not add anything more to the code. Whatever you do – do NOT use Microsoft Word because it will just wreck the code by adding a bunch of junk to it.

7. After loading the code into Notepad, search for [ <!– start haloscan (part 2) –> ] and you should see something like this:

<!– start haloscan (part 2) –> <script src=’http://www.haloscan.com/load/bloke’ type=’text/javascript’> </script> <span class=’post-comment-link’> <p><a class=’comment-link’ expr:href=’”http://www.haloscan.com/comments/bloke/” + data:post.id + “/”‘ expr:onclick=’”HaloScan(” + “\”"+ data:post.id + “\”" + “);return false;”‘> <script type=’text/javascript’>postCount(’<data:post.id/>’);</script> </a> <a class=’comment-link’ expr:href=’”http://www.haloscan.com/tb/bloke/” + data:post.id + “/”‘ expr:onclick=’”HaloScanTB(” + “\”"+ data:post.id + “\”" + “);return false;”‘> <script type=’text/javascript’>postCountTB(’<data:post.id/>’);</script> </a></p><br/> </span> <!– end haloscan –>

8. Your code of course will look a little different than mine. Now copy that code from your Notepad. Then go into your Blogger Dashboard (click on “Template“ and “Edit HTML“), and be sure to put a check mark in the “Expand Widget Templates” box.

9. Search your template code for something that looks like this:

<b:widget id=’Blog1′ locked=’false’ title=’Blog Posts’ type=’Blog’>
<b:includable id=’postQuickEdit’ var=’post’>
<b:if cond=’data:post.editUrl’>
<span expr:class=’”item-control ” + data:post.adminClass’>
<a expr:href=’data:post.editUrl’ expr:title=’data:top.editPostMsg’>
<span class=’quick-edit-icon’> </span>
</a>
</span>

10. Paste the code that you just copied from your Notepad file on a line immediately after the [ </span> ] tag.

11. Now we are going to do the same thing again for the rest of the code. Go back into your Notepad file and look for something that looks like this:

<!– start haloscan (part 1) –>
<script src=’http://www.haloscan.com/load/bloke’ type=’text/javascript’> </script>
<span class=’post-comment-link’>
<a class=’comment-link’ expr:href=’”http://www.haloscan.com/tb/bloke/” + data:post.id + “/”‘ expr:onclick=’”HaloScanTB(” + “\”"+ data:post.id + “\”" + “);return false;”‘>
<script type=’text/javascript’>postCountTB(’<data:post.id/>’);</script>
</a>
</span>
<!– end haloscan –>

12. Again, your code might be slightly different than mine. Now do the same thing and copy that code from your Notepad file.

13. Go back into your Blogger Dashboard and search for something that looks like this in your template code:

<b:if cond=’data:post.allowComments’> <a class=’comment-link’ expr:href=’data:post.addCommentUrl’ expr:onclick=’data:post.addCommentOnclick’><b:if cond=’data:post.numComments == 1′>1 Comment<b:else/><data:post.numComments/> <data:top.commentLabelPlural/></b:if></a>

14. Immediately after the code [ </b:if></a> ] paste your code that you just copied from your Notepad file. You can of course put your trackback code somewhere different than I did if you prefer. Or your code may look a little different than mine so you might have to experiment a little to get it where you want it.

15. Click on “Preview” to make sure that everything is working properly, and that’s it. If there are no error messages you can save your new template. 

Did I say this was going to be easy? Well it certainly is a lot easier than trying to figure it out on your own that’s for sure!

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