Every time you visit a web page, your browser tells that page's server where you came from. Rather than a violation of privacy, it simply tells the site's owner who is sending business their way. But Disenchanted would rather not hide this information, especially if it points to a response to one of our articles. This is why every article on our site carries links back to the pages that point to them. These reciprocal links are automatic and free.
In addition to being briefly listed on our front page (in "Recent Inbound Links"), Disenchanted personally visits all pages that point to us and may write a short note that will accompany the returning link. We're not looking to insert any opinion or judgement (unless your response makes your position unambiguous) into these notes, rather we want them to tell a visitor something about the link before they click on it.
At the simplest level, you don't need to do anything beyond the act of linking itself. If you maintain your own web site, linking to an article at Disenchanted is sufficient. As soon as you (or someone else) tests that link, our page will detect, store and display the returning link. This reciprocation is permanent and shown to all other visitors - not just you.
If you have a response to a specific paragraph of an article, then adding a simple argument to the end of the link address will make that paragraph link back to you. For example, let's say you're linking to "My PC, the Teenager" and you want your response to address the second paragraph. You'd link to the Disenchanted article with this URL:
http://www.disenchanted.com/dis/technology/teenage-pc.html?ref=2
The argument "?ref=2" at the end tells our page that paragraph #2 should contain a link back to your site.
The reciprocal link to your page will actually appear in a window that pops up as the reader clicks on the marker at the end of the paragraph you're linking to.
If you can't tell what number a paragraph is, just view the source code of the page in your browser. Each paragraph is numbered with an ID.
Incidentally, the IDs also give you the ability to use the indexing feature of HTML. If you take the URL from our example above and add "#2" to the end of it, then when your visitors load our page, their browser will automatically scroll down to that paragraph. See this example of the modified address:
http://www.disenchanted.com/dis/technology/teenage-pc.html?ref=2#2
For an example of this kind of linking in action, read Feedback heroin where a demonstration link was added to paragraph #2. Follow the link and you'll see how the refering page set the paragraph number in the URL it linked to.
Note: There is a bug in our implementation. If your page has two links to the same article and the first one you test links to the page in general, but the second one you test refers to a specific paragraph, then the paragraph link-back won't work (but the general one will). This may be fixed in the future.
If you're looking for a Backlinking system for your own site, it may be better to try TrackBack or one of its clones becacuse it doesn't come with the administrative and filtering burden of a referrer-based system.
Using referrers as your source of backlinks can be high-maintenance.
Links will only be featured on the front page after our robot has visited your page, verified that you are actually linking to us, and successfully extracted a title.
That said, we aren't here to help spammers boost their PageRank. Phony referrers don't get into our site because we check for a real backlink, and even genuine backlinks can be permanently banned if we think you're only using us.
(These are discovered in real-time and sorted by newest first. See how to get listed.)
All material published at this site, unless otherwise indicated, is Copyright © 2000 - 2004 Synesmedia, Inc. All rights reserved. No reproductions in any media are permitted without written and electronically signed permission from Synesmedia, Inc. Disenchanted occasionally features references to real people, companies and products for the purpose of satire.
Disenchanted is published by Synesmedia, Inc. Synesmedia also publishes Interchange Techniques