WordPress Plugins

Web Directory WordPress Plugin

When I started using WordPress, I liked the idea that you can store personal bookmarks on your blog. When I started using it, there are some functions that I wanted so I started searching for a plugin. I couldn’t actually find a plugin that fits my requirements so I decided to start creating my own Web Directory plugin.

I decided to use the existing WordPress tables so that I could re-use existing functions like adding/editing/deleting bookmarks. I wrote down a list of features and functions that I want to put into this plugin.

Features

Some of the current features of the Web directory WordPress plugin include the following:

Add/Edit/Delete directory entries using the current bookmark management functions existing in WordPress
Easy setup of a main Web directory page by just using a single WordPress shortcode in a page you create in WordPress
Easy integration into WordPress themes by detecting and using defined theme stylesheets
Use of pretty permalinks in the Web directory structure to provide better search engine indexing and optimization
Automatic creation of search engine friendly titles and description meta tags when web directory categories are accessed.
Paging the list of links if the list gets too long
Support for adding a “site submission” form using the Contact Form 7 plugin

Planned Features

Some of the planned features for the Web directory plugin are:

Support for sub-categories – although the current WordPress core tables already support the creation of parent-child sub category relationships, there are no core functions for doing this.
Backup / restore of categories/bookmarks – I’m also thinking of creating a Firefox plugin to be able to sync my bookmarks.
Some WordPress shortcodes to handle automatic link formatting in posts and other pages.

Installing the Web Directory plugin

After downloading the plugin, just unzip it into your WordPress plugins directory and activate the plugin from your WordPress plugins administration page.

Once the plugin has been activated, a sub menu called “Manage Directory” will be created under the “Links” menu of WordPress. There are several steps you need to do to start using the Link Directory plugin.

First, you will need to create a page inside WordPress and insert the [wplinks] shortcode that the Web Directory plugin uses to determine where to insert the contents of the bookmark directory. Check the screenshot below:

You can insert optional text between an opening [wplinks] and closing [/wplinks] shortcode. The text will be formatted in an enclosed div with a class of “intro-box”. This will allow you to format it differently than the rest of the text. As an example, you can checkout the Code Stuff link directory. I use it to put instructions.

Second, tell the Web Directory WordPress plugin which page is you will be using to display the link directory by selecting it under “Manage Directory”. You can also set a description for your web directory. This will be used when generating the description meta tag of the main link directory page. If you leave it blank, the plugin will generate a description for you.

You can customize the default styles that the Web Directory WordPress plugin use. This will allow you to modify how your link directory will look when it is displayed. Do this by creating a file named kih-web-directory.css inside the directory of the WordPress theme that you are currently using. The plugin will detect it and use that stylesheet instead of the default.

That’s it, you can start populating your WordPress bookmarks table.

Enabling the “site submission” feature

I have incorporated some code to enable users to allow visitors to their site to fill up a form for submitting requests to be added to the web directory as of version 2.6.3. The partial support can be enabled using the Web Directory plugin in conjunction with the excellent Contact Form 7 plugin. You can create your own site submission using Contact Form 7. When the Web Directory plugin detects that the Contact Form 7 plugin is installed, it will load some code stuff that will allow you to use a [linkcat] contact form 7 shortcode. The shortcode enables the display of a “Link Category” select field in your form. The [linkcat] shortcode will take care of retrieving the available WordPress Link Categories from your site database and display it as a select field in your form. At least Contact Form 7 version 2.0 is required for this feature to work and you will still need to create your own form.

You can read a tutorial on how to use the Contact Form 7 plugin with the Web Directory plugin.

Notes

You can also download the plugin from the Web Directory Plugin page at WordPress.org.

Download

Version 2.6.4

Updated: February 15, 2010

Size: 18.13 KB

Downloaded: 583 times

Responses

Shabu | WordPress Daddy says on July 9, 2009, 12:09 pm

Is there any live demo? BTW, I’ve added this plugins to our database.

Reply
kihbord says on July 9, 2009, 2:19 pm

Checkout the “Links” button on this site’s menu.

Reply
Shabu | WordPress Daddy says on July 9, 2009, 10:20 pm

@kihbord – Ahh, found it. Looks great.

Reply
Stephanie says on July 10, 2009, 1:12 am

What exactly is “wplinks” shortcode? Is is “wplinks” with the quotes? Without them? Either way, the plugin doesn’t work for me.

Reply
Gene says on July 10, 2009, 2:06 am

Great plugin but is it compatible with WP 2.8? Says “up to 2.71″ on the WP plugin page.

Reply
kihbord says on July 10, 2009, 6:06 am

@stephanie: thanks for pointing that out. I’ve updated the page to put a bit more detail. I hope that helps.

@Gene: The only reason I didn’t put it as compatible with 2.8 is because I haven’t gotten to test it myself. I haven’t used any widgets in the plugin so I don’t think there will be problems using it on WordPress 2.8.

Maybe you can help out by checking if it works and provide some feedback here for other users.

Reply
Tony says on July 16, 2009, 3:24 am

Hello, I really like your plugin, and it works for me on 2.8 . I would like some help though. How can i remove or edit the section that says “Websites/Blogs Under __” . Im referring to when i select a category, the gray box that appears over the list of links. Im really having a hard time with this css and finding it in the plugin files. Thanks for a great plugin!

Reply
Tony says on July 16, 2009, 3:36 am

Also how can i control the spacing in between the boxes?

Reply
- kihbord says on July 16, 2009, 6:43 am
  
  Hi Tony, The “Websites/Blogs Under _” is embedded in the plugin’s code. As to controlling the look such as spacing, you’ll have to dig into CSS to create your own stylesheet so that it will look the way you want it to.
  
  Reply
kihbord says on July 21, 2009, 9:49 am

@Tony, I’ve put an option in version 2.6.1 for you to be able to remove the “Websites/Blogs Under” label. Just upgrade to be able to use the feature.

Reply
Leigh says on July 22, 2009, 12:14 pm

Hi Just wondering if you are going to make it possible for visitors to add their own listing to the directory like the WP Link Directory. Your plugin looks good and you seem to be providing great support. I would like to use your product if it did this. Thanks Leigh

Reply
- kihbord says on July 22, 2009, 4:05 pm
  
  Hi Leigh,
  
  I do plan to put it in, development time is my only issue. I’m looking into providing a stop gap measure of using the new version of Contact Form 7 in the mean time. When I get it done, I’ll post it here at Code Stuff so people can have a solution while I do it. Unless a lot of people are really interested and would want to pay for the feature, I guess I’ll just have to provide a less time consuming solution for now. You can subscribe to the Code Stuff feed so you can get updated.
  
  Reply
Ria says on September 30, 2009, 5:31 pm

Nice one. I’m impressed with your plug-in. I like it very much. Explained clearly. thanks for the post.

Reply
zauberer & hütchenspieler says on October 30, 2009, 7:48 am

hi, the plugin looks very nice and i have to test this. one question, is it possible to split the links on different pages when they are too much (f.e. in one category are 50 links and i will split them 10 per page)?

thanks V.

Reply
Robert A. says on November 14, 2009, 5:25 am

Is this plugin still actively being developed? It seems as though communication falls off around the end of July.

Is it still supported / being developed?

I have seen this with almost ALL of the directory plugins… they start strong and then die on the vine.

Please advise.

Thanks.

Robert

Reply
Roofing SEO says on November 18, 2009, 7:51 am

Hi,

I like your plugin, but it is very limited right now. I think you really need to add the “Add URL” feature for blog readers. Without it it is a very crippled list of links.

Please make this feature available. I really need it, since I tried all other directory plugins and they all suck.

Thanks

Reply
Bestimweb24.de says on January 3, 2010, 5:39 pm

Submit URL not working on my Blog what is this.

Reply
- kihbord says on January 4, 2010, 5:59 am
  
  Hi,
  
  Submit URL will only work in conjunction with the Contact Forms 7 WordPress plugin. It will allow people to submit their links and notify you via email when properly configured.
  
  Reply
Toto Prayogo says on January 5, 2010, 4:33 pm

try it … thanks

Reply
roosteri says on January 11, 2010, 1:49 pm

I just downloaded and getting ready install great idea . Nice and thanks.

Reply
Mike says on January 15, 2010, 9:17 am

Can i use this to build a business directory? so would it allow people to submit and display not only the link to their site but also contact info like phone #, address, email, (some may not even have a website anyway)

Reply
- kihbord says on January 27, 2010, 6:41 am
  
  Mike,
  
  You can put the info like phone#, address, email … into the description field and format the layout by using CSS
  
  Reply
Alexandra says on January 17, 2010, 8:04 pm

Hi,
I’m using Wordpress MU 2.9.1 and I need some help with making this plugin work. I did install it without problems, but whenever I click on a category I get a 404 error. Any clue on how to solve this?
Thanks!

Reply
- kihbord says on January 27, 2010, 6:43 am
  
  Hi Alexandra,
  
  I haven’t tried it on MU but it should work. Have you tried checking your permalinks configuration?
  
  Reply
Aaron Fineman says on January 19, 2010, 11:17 am

Is there a way to set have this plugin set so that someone could fill out the form and when submitted it would become a new Post or Page (on it’s own)?
Thanks,

Reply
- kihbord says on January 27, 2010, 6:46 am
  
  You have to use the Contact Forms 7 WordPress plugin to create a submission form. You can check out http://connectedphone.com/links for a demo. I’ll be posting an example soon. just subscribe to feeds to get you updated.
  
  Reply
Arkantos says on February 11, 2010, 5:22 am

Hey, great plugin, but looks really awful when you see the page with your links. How do I do to make it look like this: http://www.codestuff.com/links ??? Could you upload it, send me the css or something?

Reply
Arkantos says on February 12, 2010, 1:27 pm

Did it! I just put the css on the theme folder. Anyway, this is a new issue, when a surf through my Links page using your plugin, the blog’s title appears twice on the navigator title bar. How can I solve that???

Reply
Dan says on February 14, 2010, 10:00 am

Like Alexandra, I’m having problems with WP Mu (and WP3 alpha). My blogs use sub-directories (rather than canonical domain names). My permalinks are all good and work without a problem.

The plug-in is truncating the address when I click on sub-categories. Let me give you an example:

http://www.website.com
Blog at: http://www.website.com/blog
Links categories at: http://www.website.com/blog/links (permalink)
Sub-categories SHOULD be at: http://www.website.com/blog/links/subcategory (and if you type in this address it works)
But instead the plug-in links to: http://www.website.com/links/subcategory – which doesn’t exist and gives a 404 error.

I imagine this should be easy enough to fix…

Otherwise great plug-in! Thank you!

Reply
- kihbord says on February 15, 2010, 6:39 am
  
  @dan I’ve just updated the plugin to 2.6.4 should now work with blogs installed in subdirectories. Pls give me some feedback if you’re still having problems. also it would be nice if you can post some feedback on the wordpress.org plugin page so that others can get some info. Thanks.
  
  Reply
Dan says on February 15, 2010, 6:46 am

I just updated it…and it now works great! Thank you so much for taking a look at it!

Do you think that a future version might have the option to open links in a new window?

Thanks again!

Reply
- kihbord says on February 15, 2010, 6:55 am
  
  Nice to know Dan. Will considering you’re requested feature in a future version.
  
  Reply
Gerome says on February 18, 2010, 7:52 am

I would appreciate a tutorial on how to use the Contact Form 7 integration, can’t see an extra options in the form maker. And putting ‘[linkcat]‘ in the CF7 form or a wp page content does not seem to work on a clean WP install.

Thanks.

Reply
Brad says on March 3, 2010, 9:47 am

This is a good looking plugin. I’ve been searching for a directory plugin for a while now.

Do you have the example text (or a screen shot) from your contact form on the connected phone site? I’d like to see the configuration of that form. I am missing something on my form. I can’t get the linkcat shortcode to work.

Keep up the great work!

Reply
DW Lance says on March 3, 2010, 10:51 pm

Hey kihbord,

I am having trouble getting Contact Form 7 to play nice with Web Directory. Do you have any more information on how to get the two to sync up? Thank You.

Reply
C Noel says on March 5, 2010, 3:46 am

Hi, Thanks for the plugin. I’m looking to have mine set up similar to the one in your demo with a table format. How do I go about this. (unless I missed it in the instructions)

Thx.

C.

Reply
kihbord says on March 8, 2010, 9:17 am

I’ve created a tutorial on how to use the Contact Form 7 plugin with the Web Directory plugin.

Reply

Code Stuff