Organise Your Blogroll
A lot of people use categories to manage their blog posts but have you ever thought about using them to manage your blogroll (sidebar links)? It’s actually very effective with minimum effort. Typically a blogroll consists of a long list of links as shown below.
The problem with a blogroll is the title itself. It means absolutely nothing to anyone and links are badly organised. You can of course change this using categories. In your WordPress dashboard click on the links drop down and select the option ‘Link Categories’. This page allows you to add categories that you can apply to your blogroll links. It’s pretty straight forward so I don’t think it needs any extra explanation. Once you’ve added the categories you feel apply to your links select the ‘Edit’ option within the links drop down menu.
This will take you to a page that lists your individual links. If you hover over the link name you’ll get the option to edit or delete that link. Click edit to add a category to your link. The following page provides more detailed information about your link. You’ll see categories about half way down the page, deselect ‘blogroll’ and apply one of your new categories to the link before saving. Repeat this for all your links which results in a much cleaner ordered set of links as shown in the example below, my categories being: my other stuff; personal favourites; and work related.
Note: You may have to edit the presentation of your blog for this to take effect. Some platforms of WordPress that I’ve used require you to personalise your sidebar to include the ‘Links’ widget.
