Blogrolls and long link lists have pretty much died out in the blogging world. Using them to link out to all your blogging friends isn’t as cool as it used to be.
If we’re not using them to link out to our friends, then what should we do with them?
Some of you may suggest getting rid of the Links section in WordPress. There must be a better way to use them though.
What you need to know about bookmarks
They’re officially called links in WordPress, but I’ve long called them bookmarks. You might also refer to this as your blogroll.
Here are some things you can add on a per-link basis:
- You can create categories for links just as you have categories for posts.
- Write a description for each link (sort of like post content).
- Add important information such as an RSS address, notes, an image, and a rating.
- Give each link an XFN
relattribute. - Make the link private.
- Add the
targetattribute (but please don’t — ugh!).
The only thing I wish we could have is an RSS feed for our links and link categories. That would be awesome.
Thinking creatively about using bookmarks
Since blogrolls are useless these days, we need to do something else with our links.
If you take a look at my sidebar, you’ll notice I have a few sections. Currently, these are labeled Cool WordPress Stuff, Must Read, Tutorials, and WordPress-o-Sphere. This alone has driven traffic to some of my older posts up and kept visitors on my site longer in the last couple of weeks. It’s a way to keep some of my old content from dying out.
Here’s a few things you can use your bookmarks for:
- Link to older content on your own site.
- Publish content, such as asides (use the link description for the content part).
- Link to your favorite articles. It’s more useful for your readers to find specific articles.
- Use them for advertising like WP Candy does (see: External Links).
- Power a page navigation menu for your site.
- Use the built-in image option to show ads and other links by image.
By breaking all of your links down into categories, you can do all kinds of neat things. You can quickly switch out large groups of links whenever you need to by managing them correctly.
Get the Widgets Reloaded plugin
Last week, I released the Widgets Reloaded plugin to the blogging world (update coming soon). This plugin overwrites several of the default widgets with its own.
Most importantly, there’s a widget called Bookmarks that’ll let you show your links in any way that you like. It’s the best bookmarks/links widget you can find if I may say so without sounding too boastful.
What are some other ways to use bookmarks effectively?
I’ve pointed out a few ways that we can use our WordPress links, but I’d like to hear what you all think. There’s not much point in letting that section of our WordPress dashboards rot away. We may as well use it for something.
Now that you’re thinking more creatively about how to best use bookmarks/links, what are your thoughts?
I have not thought the best way to use the links to my website, but when it said the bookmarking, remember to use a page with this name that is a copy (edited) of my favorites of Firefox. It has attracted many people …
[...] Using WordPress bookmarks (tags: WordPress tips) [...]
Justin Wrote:
I would love to see pingbancks on links.
I use the blogroll, to memorize cool solutions and great articles, that somebody else writes.
I’m not sure how pingbacks would work though since there would be nowhere for it to point back to. I guess it would have to point back to the page the link is on.
I was thinking more the other way round, sending pingbacks to the sites we link to from the blogroll…
I don’t know if this is a good idea or not but for some time I have been thinking of using this as a way to show my appreciation for the themes and plugins that I use by linking to the authors site(s). I’m still new to all this, learning instead of earning. I thought I might title it something like, Builders of This Site or The Engines That Power This Site or something like that.
Yeah, that would definitely work. It’s still pretty standard for a blogroll, but it’s something a little less ordinary. It’s a good way to give back to those that are helping you out with a cool plugin or theme.
I’m glad you like it I’ve started to work on as this post motivated me, thanks. I’ve decided to name it Behind the Scenes. I thought that might get people to look, I hope so anyway.
You are right about the long lists of link on the sidebar of blogs – that is really bad user experience and gives the blog a spammy look. I think it would be a good idea to have just a few links which are really helpful. Another thing which I think gives the blog a very professional look is the TopCommenter plug-in. It helps to create a community faster by showing your visitors that you care about them.
How did you rename your Widgets to make them display “Cool WordPress Stuff, Must Read, Tutorials, and WordPress-o-Sphere” instead of “Bookmarks?” What specific code did you change, to what, and in which file(s)?
[...] put out a call for people to start thinking about using bookmarks more effectively a few weeks back, but no one really answered. I suppose I’ll have to step up and show you a [...]
Free online gamer — I’m not a big fan of adding links to the top commenters of a blog. I would only suggest it if you’re building a community.
Hybrid-Leviathan User — I didn’t change any code. Stop by my support forums to get help using Hybrid’s built-in widget system.
I’ve been thinking that my resources page on ATMac should be DB driven as it’s currently just headings and links with descriptions. It would fit perfectly within what the WP bookmarks section allows but I’d never thought of it! I’m still not sure exactly how it would be done, but this is the page: http://atmac.org/resources/links/
It seems to fit what you’re suggesting is possible, at least
It beats me why Wordpress doesn’t just have a simple built-in way to add ONE link to the menu or sidebar saying “Links” or “Sponsors” or whatever that then leads to a page of links. So you don’t have a long list (or even a short one) in your sidebar which I’ve always found a bad idea. Instead you just have a standard title that leads to your list of links.
Currently I have to do it all as a page/subpages and don’t use the Wordpress links/blogroll at all. In fact, I never have.
But I like the idea I saw of using it for navigation. Don’t need to at the moment but a good thing to file away for future developments. Thanks!!
Ricky Buchanan — That page on your site should definitely be done with the WordPress Links Manager. It would make it easy to update without having to hardcode everything.
Jacki — The WordPress devs can’t make assumptions such as a site having a menu or even a sidebar. It’s just the backbone. How we display content shouldn’t be up to WordPress at all. That type of thing belongs solely within themes and plugins.
Hello Justin
Do you have an idea on how to put tags on bookmarks ?
hey justin… how does one go about renaming the “bookmarks” widget…
Well, in my mind there are two ways to use links. One is to drive traffic to my older posts (like you mentioned). To do this, I’ve created link categories for each month of the year because many of my posts (crafting, parenting, recipes) tend to be seasonal. I use Better Blogroll (along with link images and description info) to create a rotating reminder of seasonally appropriate ideas, and all I have to do to keep it current is go into the widget and update the name of the month as the category. I’m really happy with this method as it automatically shows a picture with a hover-over description of the link.
And the second use of links that I would love to utilize is to provide external resources (both affiliate and not affiliate) to my readers. The idea is that I’ve surfed the internet A LOT and have accumulated a ton of bookmarks of how-tos and inspiration for cooking, crafting, parenting, homeschooling, etc. And each one of these has multiple subcategories and sub-subcategories. This is the one that I’m having more of a problem with making a reality. I’d like to display these on easily navigable pages, possibly with thumbnails for the actual links. For example… Educational Resources would have the subcategories of Writing, Music, Science, Math, History, Art and then the Science subcategory would have further subcategories of Biology, Astronomy, Geology, Physics. But, wordpress doesn’t support hierarchies for link categories. And without the hierarchies, it would just be information overload. Also, there are so many of these bookmarks that I worry about the mess it would make of the links page on my admin panel. Finally, I have no idea how to actually go about displaying them (even if I was able to load all the hierarchies), which is what I googled to find you.
I’m new enough to wordpress (still posting on blogger as I create the wordpress site) that every single thing I do has a huge learning curve. The wordpress forum has been less than awesome, so I thought I’d reach out to the blogs. I’ll definitely be poking around your site, starting with How to create an image gallery with bookmarks.
Thanks so much.
Hello Justin
Do you have an idea on how to put tags on bookmarks?
qoman
I have (hacked) the wp-links-opml.php file to output the links as RSS. It’s not very robust, but anyone that wants it is welcome to ask (via the contact page on the above URL).
As for tracking, I’m using Google Analytics anyway, so I just use that to track external link clicks: http://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=55527
I’m rather sick of links/bookmarks being such second-class citizens, but I don’t really have enough time to participate in the development community in order to submit patches to WP
Cheers!
Rick Measham