Chris is rebooting the blogroll idea. I used to have one but it got lost when I moved from pivot to WordPress. We held on to the links in GlowBlogs. The idea of giving the blogroll more importance is attractive, but would bring a deal of maintenance with it.
It is always good to be reminded about OPML, I’ve found Chris’s indieWeb one useful as well as Aaron’s Feeds. I subscribe to both in inoreader, so when they add a feed I do too.
Is there a worry that the already depreciated Links Manager feature in WordPress will go away altogether? I think I recall discussing this with the developers working on Glow Blogs and the links technology in WordPress is old and doesn’t really fit with the way WordPress is developed now.
@johnjohnston You echo my concern that the underlying functionality could be removed completely. I’m considering a solution based on a custom post type so may play around with that later.
Though WP deprecated the Links Manager, it’s still in core, and as we all know, they’re BIG (maybe too big) on backwards compatibility. I suspect that if they did remove it altogether, they would abstract it out to a standalone plugin.
There are also newer updated plugins like https://wordpress.org/plugins/simple-links/ for those who are more concerned.
Either way, I’m hoping that this sort of functionality “comes back to life” on the open web, so perhaps WP will not only bring it back, but put more resources into extending it.
My blogroll went stale and fell behind the cupboard a long while ago. I do like the multi purpose of it- as a signal to others of who influences you (so they can expand their own) but also as a bit of recognition for them.
It hardly seems worth it to create new data structures when it is exactly what the outline format of OPML does. That’s what its built for.
I have zero inside information but seriously doubt the WordPress Links structure is going to vanish. There’s nothing about it that impacts other functions. There is a thing where sometimes a feature is deprecated or no longer supported and people quickly panic to find a replacement. If it is well designed, it can work for a long time. Heck, I am still using Aperture to manage my photos. The RSS Feed parser that runs Feed2JS, http://magpierss.sourceforge.net/ continues to work after it’s last update in 2004.
Links can certainly work well, it’s a manual entry process to create them, but at least you can export OPML autogenerated from them https://en.support.wordpress.com/blogroll/import-export-links/ You should consider creating category or at least deleting the default ones that come with a new install.
A better approach IMHO is to use Inoreader as the manager of links, it serves the dual role of being the tool to read links, but it’s maybe the only one I know of that offers a link to a dynamically generated OPML.
If only more people kept up at blogging it might be worth rolling again.
Colin I’ll be interested in what you come up with.
It sounds like WordPress links will be with us for a while, thanks for the reassurance Chris & Alan.
I think I’ve still got the odd copy of magpieRSS running somewhere too. I’ve also been musing about inoreader. It does a lot of nice things. Mine is probably a bit disorganised and large for a blog roll at the moment, but I might organise it at some point.