New Auto Links plugin

Some very good points. I’ve been working pretty hard over the past few days on the plugin, and there are going to be a few more features. I hadn’t even considered what Dgold said, but that’s a *very* good point. I’ll look into that.

For vkaryl, I’m not a fan of javascript, so I won’t use it in the script. However, I will do this. I’ll create an option for inserting your own bit’s of HTML/Javascript. If there are bits of code you want included in every link, just type it into a text box from the admin screen and it’ll get put in. And if you leave the “Target window to open link in:” option blank, the plugin won’t add any kind of ‘target=’ parameter.

It does include the alt parameter in the image. I don’t know about the name parameter. What should the plugin put there? The URL of the link, the keyword?

I could make another option for specifying ‘alt’, ‘name’, and ‘class’ parameters. You can do something like:

Enter custom ‘name’ parameter : [ Visit %KW% now! ]

And if the keyword being linkified is Yahoo, the value of ‘name’ would be ‘Visit Yahoo now!’.

I could probably make a few %TAGS% which are replaced with relevant information.

I’m putting in keyword tracking because I want it for myself. That’s been taking up the past could days. Hopefully I’ll have the next minor version out before the weekend.

Thanks for the feedback and keep it coming!

– Sean

This plugin sounds interesting. But can someone explain to me in plain English what it does & how it does it? I’d love a plugin that would be able to take a set of words I commonly use which I’d like to turn into links whenever I include them in a post (New York Time, Washington Post, etc.). Is that something like what this does?

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read about a plugin that sounded like it might be intriguing but the plugin author never bothered to explain clearly what it did. Certainly, technophiles would know because shorthand & jargon are easily understood by them. But pity us poor layfolk who need some explanation.

Richard1052,
That’s exactly what it does. If you use the word Yahoo, or Washington Post in an article, that word is automatically turned into a link to their website.

Of course which words it turns into links is up to you. The plugin maintains a database of keywords and their links. It comes with a default set of keywords and links, but you can add your own, and remove keywords.

In fact I like the way you put it, that does sound a bit clearer than my explanation.

– Sean

New Feature List: This is for the upcoming release of v0.9beta, which should be out tonight or tomorrow. All of these options are configurable, and can be turned on or off.

Keyword Logging – View stats about which keywords are being clicked the most, which gives you an idea of what your site visitors interest are.

Add protocol (i.e. https://) to link – I realized it was a bit presumptuous of the plugin to add https:// to each link. That made it impossible to link to pages that start with https:// or ftp://, and also made it more difficult to link to pages within your own domain.

Custom HTML/JavaScript to Add to Links – Now you can slip your own bits of code into each link. Gives you the option to put bits of JavaScript and other goodies into the links.

Link ‘ALT’, ‘NAME’, and ‘CLASS’. Now you can change or add any of these to your tags.

And I’ve still got a few more ideas for the future. Also I’ll be putting in Dgolds suggestion about a keyword tree, which allows you to use different keywords for the same company. This is a bit harder to program, so that will come in the next release.

Thanks for the feedback folks!
– Sean

Hi again…. don’t know about link “name”…. link “title” is what is required to validate. Nice to see updates, and while I understand your unwillingness to use js, that particular “onclick” function allows “linkified” pages to validate to my preferred doctype. I myself wouldn’t be wanting anything else in the way of js (other than a couple of external files I load through the header).

The keyword tree, when complete, will be VERY nice. Dgold, that’s a great suggestion!

Thanks again for this plugin, Sean!

vkaryl,
Your right about the name/title thing. I don’t know what I was thinking. ??

– Sean

No problem…. I have mini brain-farts like that all the time! (Of course, I get to claim “blond and senior” as an excuse….)

Great, I’ll try it then. My problem is that I don’t often link to a static link like yahoo.com (as an example). I usually am linking to various news article within yahoo.com. So I’m not sure whether it will help me for links that are individualized for ea. different article I might be linking to. But I’ll check it out to see what it can do.

The new version is done, v0.9beta!

You can download it from the Auto Links page at:
https://www.forceagainstsomething.com/index.php/auto-links-plugin-for-wordpress/

*New Features*
-Keyword tracking.
-Custom ‘alt’, ‘title’, and ‘class’ attributes.
-Insert your own JavaScript into the links.
-And more…

New users and old should read the installation instructions from the Auto Links page, since the installation has changed a little bit, especially when it comes to setting directory permissions if your going to use keyword tracking.

I want to remind everyone that this is still beta software, and although I’ve tested it, it is sure to have some bugs. Adding the new options and keyword tracking has made the software more complex, thus leaving it prone to more bugs.

As always, feedback is great! If there are any error messages, please try to let me know what they are.

*ToDo*
I will have a keyword tree before 1.0. I expect a few more minor versions, like 0.9.1, 0.9.2, etc..

– Sean

Ok, I’m releasing v0.9.1 that fixes a couple of bugs that were brought to my attention.

-Removed ‘alt’ attribute from tag.
-Won’t linkify keywords that are part of bigger words, i.e. won’t linkify ‘intel’ in ‘intelligence’.
-Links have been tested to be valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional.

As always, you can get the latest version from:
https://www.forceagainstsomething.com/index.php/auto-links-plugin-for-wordpress/

Thanks to everyone that’s been leaving feedback on my website. You’re the ones making Auto Links a better plugin.

– Sean

Here’s release version v0.9.2. This was a complete rewrite of the codes ‘core’, and it should run a great deal faster.

As always, you can get the latest version from:
https://www.forceagainstsomething.com/index.php/auto-links-plugin-for-wordpress/

Keep the feedback coming!

– Sean

Ok, minor update that addresses Dgolds request. Now if two or more keywords point to the same address, only the first one will be turned into a link.

So if you have both Wal-Mart and Walmart, and they both point to https://www.walmart.com, only the first keyword will get turned into a link.

– Sean

Sean, just noticed your updates posts. I appreciate you taking the time to address my suggestion. I’m going to download the update and install, later tonight.

–Dgold

Dgold,
Not a problem. It was a good idea. Right now it’s not the ‘tree’ envisioned, since from the admin menu, you’d still have to type in two or more different keywords with the same link address. Hopefully by v1.0 I’ll have more of a ‘tree’ thing going on.

Some other things I want to add before hitting the big v1.0.

I’ve got the keyword tracking logs viewer turned off right now. I’m rebuilding it so that it’s more useful with bar graphs and stuff. If you’re using v0.9.2 and up, if you have keyword tracking turned on, and you view your logs, the only thing you’ll see is the raw logging data.

I discovered that Auto Links works real well for Amazon associates. I think it’s a great plugin to use for that kinda thing, especially with the keyword tracking. The only problem is if you are going to use it for Amazon associate searches, you can’t use it for plain ol’ keywords (i.e. Google) because of the way you have to change the Image option. I’d like to change it so the plugin can handle both well. There is a quick ‘how-to’ on my website for setting up Auto Links to work with Amazon.

The plugin needs a decent way to edit the keywords. This is something that was brought up in a comment on my site, and it’s very true. Right now if you want to edit the keyword ‘WordPress’ to change the URL, you have to delete the keyword and redo it. That’s just a hack, and I wanna change that.

Adding keywords on the fly. Right now you add keywords through the admin panel. But what if, while writing a post, you decide you want a new keyword, something you’ve just written, to be a keyword. I want to create a tag that you can wrap words in, and when you save/publish the post, Auto Links will see that word and add it to your keywords list for you.

And there are a number of small little things here and there. If anyone else has any ideas, I’m all for hearing them.

– Sean

https://www.forceagainstsomething.com/index.php/auto-links-plugin-for-wordpress/

Well I went ahead and added built in support for Amazon associates accounts. You can now turn keywords like ‘Shrek’, or any other keyword you decide, into a clickable link to an Amazon search, where your associates account gets credit for anything the visitor buys.

– Sean