I think that most people who’ve used WordPress have a great affinity for the Links Manager—in fact, most of us would rather use it above all else. Me, I’m wishing that the WordPress development team would release it as a standalone piece of GPL’d code for use in non-WordPress sites. For my use, I’d implement it immediately on GFMorris.net to maintain that sidebar, which I do right now by hand. [All that is now is a hand-maintained, unordered list with a bunch of XFN data.]
Why do I advocate this?
- Marketing. Not everyone is going to want to use WordPress for sites such as my GFMorris.net, but people will like having a good tool for this kind of thing. Since the Links Manager is best-of-breed in my opinion, it would become popular throughout the site design community as the tool to manage links—and while that’s a small niche, look into the toolset of any master chef, and you’ll find lots of great tools that do one thing and do it well. Don’t you think that the WP devs could stand that level of marketing?
- Improving the Web. Providing good linking tools that make use of good metadata, as the Links Manager does, makes the Web better, because it lowers the barrier to making great links for content producers.
