[wp-trac] [WordPress Trac] #20226: Don't advertise pingback URL on resources that don't support pingbacks

[WordPress Trac]

#20226: Don't advertise pingback URL on resources that don't support pingbacks
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 Reporter:  solarissmoke      |       Owner:  wonderboymusic
     Type:  enhancement       |      Status:  closed
 Priority:  normal            |   Milestone:  4.4
Component:  Pings/Trackbacks  |     Version:  3.3
 Severity:  minor             |  Resolution:  fixed
 Keywords:  has-patch         |     Focuses:  template
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Comment (by dd32):

 I'm on the fence here.

 On one hand, WordPress itself doesn't support pingbacks for non-singular
 URLs, advertising it as such is probably the wrong thing to do. It doesn't
 do any harm though.

 On the other hand, it doesn't do any damage to advertise the URL for all
 resources, it makes it easier to identify a WordPress site, some services
 might be checking the root for pingback support and aborting if not, and
 any existing plugins which are managing pingbacks for non-singular URLs
 will now break (especially since the theme `<link>` tag is now locked
 behind an `is_singular()`).

 I kind of think that the `is_singular()` checks should at a minimum be
 moved into `pings_open()`, with `pings_open()` being checked for any valid
 queried object.

 > The first request sent will be an HTTP HEAD which will result in no
 X-pingback header.
 > ...
 > So with the current change there will be 3 HTTP request to the site for
 like 99% of the wordpress sites instead of the two that were up to 4.4.

 If that were true, then I would agree that we can't make the change, but
 that's not the behaviour of Stock WordPress, it only happens if there's
 something else short-circuiting HEAD requets.

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Ticket URL: <https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/20226#comment:22>
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