WordPress 2

• The display of links in your blog is controlled by your blog's theme. We tell you more about themes in Chapter 6.

• To keep things simple, throughout this book, we use the word links to refer to links or bookmarks.

1.

From your WordPress Dashboard, click the Links or Bookmarks button.

2.

If necessary, click the Manage Links or Manage Bookmarks button in the second row of buttons.

A list of all existing links appears in the Bookmarks Management (Figure 78a) or Manage Links (Figure 78b) administration panel.

• Your WordPress blog will automatically include some links when you install it. The links installed with a WordPress.com account differ from those in a WordPress server installation. You can remove any of the preinstalled links.

• You can customize the view of the links in the Bookmarks Management (Figure 78a) or Manage Links (Figure 78b) administration panel:

  • To narrow down the list of displayed links to those in a single category, choose that category from the Currently showing (Figure 78a) or Show links in category (Figure 78b) drop-down list and click Update or Show.

  • To sort links, choose a column from the bookmarks ordered by (Figure 78a) or Order by (Figure 78b) drop-down list and click Update or Show.

1.

From your WordPress Dashboard, click the Bookmarks or Links button.

2.

Click the Add Bookmark or Add Link button in the second row of buttons. The Create Bookmark (Figure 79a) or Add a link (Figure 79b) administration panel appears.

3.

Enter information for the link in the Basics area:

• URI is the fully-qualified URL to the page or site you're linking to. Be sure to include the http://.

• Link Name is the name of the link as you want it to appear in your Links list.

• Short description is a brief description of the page, site, or blog you're linking to. This may or may not appear beneath the link (depending on the settings in your theme) but it always appears when a visitor points to the link.

• Categories or Category is the category you want to group the link in. For WordPress.com sites, turn on one or more check boxes in the Categories area (Figure 79a), which includes all defined categories. For WordPress server-installed blogs, choose an option from the drop-down list (Figure 79b), which includes all defined link categories.

4.

If desired, enter information for the link in the Link Relationship (XFN) area by toggling check boxes and selecting radio buttons.

5.

If desired, enter information for the link in the Advanced area:

• Image URI is the complete URL for an image you want to display with the link. For best results, this image should be 16x16 pixels in size.

• RSS URI is the complete URL for the RSS feed for the linked site.

• Notes is for storing notes about the linked site.

• Rating is your own personal rating for the link. This option is useful if you set up your link display to sort links by rating.

• Target is the target attribute for the link tag: _blank opens the link in a new page, _top opens the link in the same page after clearing frames, and none opens the link in the same page. These options appear in the Target area for WordPress.com blogs (Figure 79a) and in the Advanced area for WordPress server-installed blogs (Figure 79b).

• Visible determines whether the link will appear in Links lists. The Yes and No options appear in the Visible area for WordPress.com blogs (Figure 79a) and in the Advanced area for WordPress server-installed blogs (Figure 79b).

6.

Click Add Bookmark or Add Link.

The link is added to your blog's link list.

• You may have to click the + button at the right end of a section name (Figure 79a) to display options in that section.

• We tell you more about themes in Chapter 6 and explain how to add and modify link categories later in this part of the chapter.

• XFN stands for XHTML Friends Network. Setting options in the Link Relationship area includes special coding for participation in this program. You can learn more at gmpg.org/xfn/.

• If you include an Image URI in step 5, the image may appear instead of the text link, depending on your blog's theme and settings for the link's category. Figure 80 shows an example using the Default theme in a WordPress.com blog. We tell you more about link categories starting on the next page.

  Figure 80. This example shows how a links list might appear in the Default theme if an Image URI is provided for one of the links.

• If the page or site you're linking to has a favicon.ico file, you may want to use that as the Image URI in step 5. You can normally find it in the root directory for the site. So, for example, the URI for the favicon file on Maria's site (Figure 80) would be http://www.marialanger.com/favicon.ico.

1.

From your WordPress Dashboard, click the Links button.

2.

Click the Link Categories button in the second row of buttons to display the Link Categories administration panel (Figure 81).

3.

If necessary, scroll down to the Add a Link Category area.

4.

Set options in the Category Options area:

• Name is the name of the category.
• Show enables you to specify what should show for each link in the category. Image is the link's image, Description is the link's description, Rating is the link's rating, and Updated is the date you modified the link. (Most of these options are set when you add a link as discussed on the previous two pages.) You can turn on the check box for any combination of these options.

• Sort order determines how links in the category are sorted: by name, unique ID, URL, rating, update date, or random. Turning on the Descending check box displays them in the reverse order.
• Limit enables you to specify the maximum number of links to display. Leave the box empty for no limit.
• Toggle displays only the newest link in the category by hiding all others when a new link is added.

5.

Set options in the Formatting area to specify the HTML tags to be used for formatting the links list:

• Before Link is the tag that should be placed before each link. By default, this is the <li> or start list item tag.

• Between Link and Description is the tag that should be placed between the link and its description (if displayed). By default, this is <br /> or line break.

• After Link is the tag that should be placed after each link. By default, this is the </li> or end list item tag.

6.

Click Add Category. The link category is added to the list of categories at the top of the Link Categories administration panel.

• To add categories for bookmarks in a WordPress.com blog, follow the instructions in the section titled "To add a category or subcategory" near the beginning of this chapter.

• If a category has a lot of links but you don't want to display them all, enter the maximum number of links you want to display in the Limit box and set the Sort order option to Random. This way, each time the links list is loaded, a different collection of links will appear for the category.

• In the Before Link box in step 5, if you use a tag that requires a closing tag, you must put the corresponding closing tag in the After Link box.

1.

From your WordPress Dashboard, click the Links button.

2.

Click the Link Categories button in the second row of buttons to display the Link Categories administration panel (Figure 81).

3.

To modify a link category, click the Edit link on the right end of the category's row. Then set options in the Edit Category administration panel that appears (Figure 82) and click the Save Category Settings button.

4.

To delete a link category, click the Delete link on the far-right end of the category's row. Click OK in the confirmation dialog that appears (Figure 83) to delete the link category.

• To modify or delete bookmark categories in a WordPress.com blog, follow the instructions in the sections titled "To edit a category" and "To delete a category" near the beginning of this chapter.

• Deleting a link category does not delete any links. When you delete a link's category, the default category (Blogroll) is assigned to it.

1.

From your WordPress Dashboard, click the Bookmarks or Links button.

2.

Click the Import Bookmarks or Import Links button in the second row of buttons to display the Import your blogroll from another system administration panel (Figure 84).

3.

Enter the URL for an OPML file in the Specify an OMPL URL box.

or

Use the Browse button to locate, select, and open an OPML file on your hard disk.

4.

Use the Category drop-down list to choose the category into which you want to import the links. This list will include all defined link categories.

5.

Click Import OPML File. The links are imported and listed in the window (Figure 85).

• OPML stands for Outline Processor Markup Language. It's an XML-based standard format for transfering information. You can learn more about OPML format at www.opml.org.

• As you can imagine, this is a quick way to add links to your site. All you need to do is get them in the OPML format!

1.

From your WordPress Dashboard, click the Bookmarks or Links button.

2.

If necessary, click the Manage Bookmarks or Manage Links button in the second row of buttons to display the Bookmarks Management (Figure 78a) or Manage Links (Figure 78b) administration panel.

3.

To modify a link, click the Edit button in the link's row. Then use the Edit Bookmark or Edit a link administration panel that appears to modify link settings. (This panel looks and works just like the Create Bookmark (Figure 79a) or Add a link (Figure 79b) shown and discussed earlier in this section.) When you're finished making changes, click Save Changes.

4.

To delete a link, click the Delete button in the link's row. Click OK in the confirmation dialog that appears to remove the link.

5.

To change multiple links at once in a WordPress server-installed blog, turn on the check box beside each link you want to change. Then:

• To change the owner of the links, choose a user from the Assign ownership to drop-down list and click Go.

• To toggle the visibility of the links, click Toggle Visibility.

• To move the links to another link category, choose a category from the Move to category drop-down list and click Go.

• In step 4, for a WordPress.com blog, you can turn on the check box beside each link you want to delete and click the Delete Checked Bookmarks button to delete them all at once.

• In step 5, you can click the Toggle Checkboxes link to toggle the settings for all check boxes. This is a quick way to check or uncheck them all.