How to add a link exchange manager into your blog
March 14, 2006 by Gaman
Exchanging links with other websites or blogs is one of the ways for you to promote and increase your blog traffic. Getting links from other sites or blogs can also increase your PageRank. Your PageRank, combined with other onsite ranking criteria will give your pages a better chance to be ranked high in Google search results.
Wordpress comes with a built in links exchange tool that allows you to links to other sites. This tool should suffice for most people link exchange needs. However if you want more you’ll have to look somewhere else.
Here at Sabahan.com, I’ve added a Partners page that allows others to add their own links. I am using Link manager LinkMan from PHPJunkYard.
Here’s how it works: When someone fills out and submit the Add Link form, LinkMan verifies if a reciprocal link to Sabahan.com has been added before adding the link into Sabahan.com’s Partners page. Currently, I haven’t seen any Wordpress plugin that is able to do this so LinkMan is a good alternative.
If you prefer, you can install LinkMan by itself without bothering with Wordpress integration and just place a link pointing to your link page anywhere from your blog. All you have to do is edit LinkMan’s header.txt and footer.txt files to match your blog template design. But if you want a seamless integration, you’ll have to perform several extra steps. Since LinkMan is not a Wordpress plugin itself, we’ll have to find a way to integrate and run it from a Wordpress page.
To do this I use PHPExec from Priyadi.net. This plugin lets you execute dynamic PHP code in posts. Note that if you are using Wordpress 2.0, you’ll need to use the patched version to make this works.
Now, just install the PHPExec plugin as you nomally would with a plugin. Once activated, proceed with the LinkMan installation by following the instructions as outlined in the Readme.htm file that comes with the script. After installation, your LinkMan link page normally can be accessed via http://www.yourdomain.com/linkman/links.php.
But what you want to do now is to run links.php from a page in your blog. To do so, create a page and place the following code on the page editor.
<phpcode>
<?php include("/path/to/my/links.php"); ?>
</phpcode>
You can also wrap the code itself from links.php with the <phpcode> tags instead of linking directly to the links.php file. Either way, you’ll need to remove the following line from links.php since you won’t be using those files anymore to create your header and footer.
require_once("header.txt");
and
require_once("footer.txt");
You may also want to edit other HTML element in your link page to match your blog template design as close as possible.
So there you have it, a functional, and easy to use link manager on your blog!
Thanks to LiewCF.com for the pointer.
Thanks for Posting this article, It helped me a lot. Intially i had some problems but then I did it
See this
http://thila.ropage.com/index.php/links/
Thanks
How to add the Sign up form to the page ??
I tried but it too me to index.php when i filled the form
Hi Thilak, glad to know it helps. To ad the sign up form, just create a page and paste the HTML code.
Thanks for your Quick Reply !!
But It doesn’t work.
The form and other stuff loads in the Page but i get error when trying to add link.
Add Form worked !
Thanks
My “partner’s page” doesnt work. I followed your instructions as above.
http://blog.menj.org/partners/
A link should be showing up, you can see it at the original Linkman page:
http://blog.menj.org/linkman/links.php
- MENJ
Ok, never mind about the above. I managed to make it work
- MENJ
Hey,
Glad to know it’s working
I have been using Reciprocal manager for a few years now on all of my websites… never thought about using it with my blogs till now… cool idea.
I have been big into reciprocal linking, but I totaly agree it has to be theme based or it will not work.
Even better, do three way linking. Link your blog “A” to another persons blog “B”, and he in turn links to your blog “C”.
This way it looks more natural to the search engins. And does not look like a reciprocal link excahnge… final note. .stay away from Link exchange sites… Google knows who they are, and from what I can tell they are penilizing sites that use em.
Haha, good way to get more link.
I gonna have i too on my blog soon.
Come to exchange with me too
Thanks pal for the information.
Regard,
Kelvin
Techblogy
is there a way to make the links to show in several pages (like a navigation bar), since i have a lot of links requests but don’t want it to be too long on one page?
I guess you’ll have to fiddle with the code in order to do that. I’ll need sometime to figure it out since I am not a PHP programmer
i’ve problem to run the php in my new create page…the error said that:
Warning: Unknown: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/isma/public_html/wp-content/plugins/phpexec.php(64) : eval()’d code on line 3
Warning: Unknown: Failed opening ‘/path/to/my/links.php’ for inclusion (include_path=’.:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php’) in /home/isma/public_html/wp-content/plugins/phpexec.php(64) : eval()’d code on line 3
can you help me with this?
mohdismail: It looks like you path is incorrect /path/to/my/links.php.
Make sure to edit the correct file to reflect the correct path.
thanx..it’s working now~
which is correct?
Dudez..I have some problem here..what exactly the correct path to
view my
(/path/to/my/links.php)
can you give me some example?
i’ve installed my LINKMAN to http://www.ahmadamir.com/linkman/
Ahmad: I do not know the correct path for your server. You’ll have to check with the person who uploaded the files into your server.
If you want an example path
/var/www/dir/html/linkman
the file was uploaded in (public_html) with the of linkman directory..
Please state it in detail:
‘var’ meam what?
Well, it does not matter what it means. It’s like the name of a folder in my computer and you would have different folders in your computer. I couldn’t possible know what folders are available in your computer. But this time we are talking about folders in your server.
if my my file way uploaded in my public_html directory in my server with the folder name ‘linkman’..then what would be the correct php code i should use in my page editor?
Sorry, I don’t know. You’ll have to contact your server administrator or hosting company for this info. It should be somtehing like
../public_html/linkman/
but you’ll have to contact your hosting company for the full path.
Great idea! Link popularity actually boosted my SERPs.
yup, i like this tool..
i use it for link directory at http://www.rajalaut.com
pretty simple to understand..
hi there…ive tried to installed the plugin and such and everything looked fine until i refresh my page,then i saw this line:
WordPress database error: [You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near ''shamsul el\'' at line 1]
SELECT * FROM wp_users WHERE user_login = ’shamsul el\’
what is it anyway?
how to debug this…thanks
^_^
I am no MYSQL expert here..
Anyway here’s a quick guess, try removing the “\” at the end of ’shamsul el\’
im newbie..dont shoot me! what is “URL with reciprocal link”.
already added sabahan.com link for a long time… i put it in the blogroll. Am i not qualified? Or do i need to have PR5?
Joneh, it’s not your fault. I noticed a bug in the link exchange manager where it removes a few links automatically for some reason.
Try adding your link again while I try to find a solution for this. Cheers.
great… my hosting server is down on and off. probably thats the “why”. but i do appreciate be in the partner page.. for i am a true sabahan :crying:
sorry to disturb u again gaman… but i think i double requested my blog in the partner page. My blog is listed at no.8 and no.9. You can remove one of them.. one only ok.
thanks. Im back at this page coz im in the process of adding this link manager thing, so balik belajarlah sini.
Orait no problem
got another Q… this must be CSS coding.. the numbering sequence… no.1, 2, 3 etc… can u help me gaman? just this part im stuck now. the program works as intended. but really need some thinkering with the coding. The Form Action=” “.. really need to put the directory path in full. other than that.. all cosmetic. help me pls. jsut want the numbering thing.
you can use
<li></li>something like
echo "<li><a href=\"$url\" target=\"_new\" class=\"linkman\" rel="nofollow">$title</a> - $description</li>\n";im sorry, in what file is that?
The code was not displayed correctly. I have corrected the problem. This is on the link page itself.
I used php Link Directory for that … works fine with loads of features. Version 2 is free but 3 is not though.
http://www.phplinkdirectory.com/articlescript/features.php
there is error on the script, can read reciprocal link in rajaringgit.net, eventhough I have added sabahan.com
Our URL (http://www.sabahan.com) wasn’t found on your reciprocal links page (http://rajaringgit.net)!
Please make sure you place this exact URL on your page before adding your link!
Looks like there’s a problem with the script. Will look into it asap.
Gaman, is this plugin still working? it does not seem to work in my wp2.2… the phpexec I mean. The Linkman error:
Warning: include() [function.include]: URL file-access is disabled in the server configuration in /public_html/wp-content/plugins/phpexec.php(64) : eval()’d code on line 2
any idea?
Thanks
I can confirm that it works with wp2.2. You might want to check with your host why they disable “URL file access” on the server
thanks gaman… at least I know it works. Hmm… now back to my host for some explanantion
thanx a ton gaman….very informative..