the Mind’s Chew Toy

As Heather pointed out to me the other day, I always seem to decide to start a site redesign at the most inopportune times. The last one, back in July, kicked off just a few weeks before our wedding. This time around, it’s close to the holidays, and we are busy finishing up the last of our shopping, sending a whole ton of presents via those friendly folks at our neighborhood UPS store, and preparing for a visit from relatives. What can I say? When the urge to redesign overtakes me, I can’t seem to stop it.

After having so much trouble connecting my PHP Links Directory installation with my Wordpress-powered site (see PHP Links Directory and WordPress), I pretty much gave up on the connection for awhile, instead focusing on re-designing the site (again).

Recently, I switched servers, and, while checking the site over recently, noticed I hadn’t added PHPLD back to the site yet. Once I uploaded the files to the server, I figured I’d give the integration thing another try…and got it to work (sort of).

Want to know how? Read on…

I read once that having a links directory on your website is good for helping to promote your site. Searching around a bit, I finally found just what I was looking for, and it was free! The solution: PHP Links Directory (from phplinkdirectory.com - the free version is in the left sidebar).

It did everything I could ask for: it stored the links in a database, so updating was extremely easy; you could add a description of the link; you could specify whether the link would open in a new window; you can select specific links as featured links (always on top and set apart from the rest of the links on the page); the links were arranged into categories (which helps eliminate long link lists, which google and other search engines frown upon); you could click a button to have the program check all reciprocal links, and the look was highly customizable! Perfect…until I switched to WordPress.