Automatic Links

by on Apr 10, 2009

As you may know, when people post URLs in comments, WordPress automatically appends anchor tags and makes them clickable. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, this is not an option for URLs posted in posts and on pages. I ran into this problem when working on another blog and posting several pages of URLs. I didn’t want to go through and link each one, so I found a plugin that will do it for me. It also gives you the option of making the links NoFollow.

The Automatic Links plugin will convert all URLs and email addresses into active links, so you don’t have to do this manually. This literally saved me hours of work and an enormous amount of frustration. Again, I don’t know why this isn’t even a standard option in WordPress, but I think it definitely should be.

  • http://www.kiwibloke.org GregR

    I agree, it is time consuming cutting and pasting links, then using the box to add etc etc. This is very useful, especially if you are doing that friday meme links and lists.
    Cheers

    GregR´s last blog post..Gary Vaynerchuk Does Kiwi Sauvingon Blancs (Video)

  • http://www.shavemagazine.com Magazine

    wordpress is a compromise… its easy to use but it doesnt have all the features it should.

    Thanks for the tip about the plugin tho.

  • http://www.trade-show-guru.com/about/ trade show guru

    Hmmm… I thought from your title that you had a system or program to automatically get links for my blog! :)
    Although wordpress isn’t perfect, is has plugins, which takes care of so many problems and makes it “near perfect”. Thanks for the tip on this one. Now if you can just tell me where I can get the automatic links… :)
    ~ Steve, the trade show guru

    trade show guru´s last blog post..Trade Show Booth Staffing Secrets

  • http://drivelocity.com drivelocity

    GregR, It’s a huge time saver, but it’s not for everyone, especially if you want custom anchor text for SEO purposes. I don’t post a lot of plain URLs here, so I won’t bother with it on drivelocity.com, but it sure was a life saver on the other blog!

    Magazine, One thing I love, among many, is that WordPress is updated often and they add features that were formerly only available via plugins. Hopefully this will be added in a future release.

    Steve, hehehe… Anything to get automatic links is going to be considered black hat and will likely only hurt you in the long run. Any link exchange requests I get that look automated go in the trash immediately.

  • http://www.thefilmwall.com/blog marc lohan

    i think word press is the best.it have more than thousands plug-in…

  • http://my-weightlosshelp.blogspot.com kent

    Thanks for pointing this out to us. I think many are unaware of this “flaw” or “oversight” in wordpress. Thanks for the plugin.
    .-= kent´s last blog ..Discover Six Fast Ways to Loose Weight =-.

  • http://drivelocity.com drivelocity

    kent, No problem. I really think this should be a standard feature; however, I can also see that there may be URLs that you’d want to post, but not share link love with…