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Version 1.3   Updated Friday, February 20th, 2009 at 7:19pm

Multi Column Link List Plugin for WordPress

This plugin generates an alphabetical listing of your WordPress links in multiple columns. You can choose the number of columns to display, with an option to split up the list of links by letter. It also supports the use of a custom header to help separate the links. For example, you could have it say ‘Links: A’ and then list the links that start with ‘A’, etc. The link list can easily be added to any post or page with the trigger text, or called directly from a template file. A CSS file is also included for easy style changes.

Related Plugins

There is also a plugin available to generate a multi-column list of your WordPress categories.

Download

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Notes

The purpose of this plugin is to generate a full list of links (with the exception of the link categories you exclude). This means that it does not sort links by category, only by name.

Installation

  • Download the above file and uncompress
  • Upload dd-multi-col-links.php to your plugins directory
  • Upload dd-multi-col-links.css to your theme directory
  • Activate the plugin from the WordPress admin panel
  • Configure the options under the admin panel: Options – DDMultiColLinks

Usage

To use this plugin, simply add the following trigger text to a post or page:

<!-- multicollinks -->

If you prefer, you can also call the function directly from a template file with the following command:

<?php echo ddmcl_generate(); ?>

Change Log

  • 09-29-07 Version 1.3 – Updated for WordPress 2.3. Added ‘Load Default Options’ button. Removed javascript expand code because it was too buggy.
  • 05-16-07 Version 1.2 – Updated for WordPress 2.2.
  • 03-02-07 Version 1.1 – Option added to allow click-to-expand lists. Special thanks to Richard K Miller for submitting the code!
  • 02-13-07 Version 1.0 – First release.

Options

Here are the options available for this plugin under the WordPress admin panel

Number of columns

The number of columns that the links will be shown in. If you want to show more columns than your layout width will handle, you can adjust the width of each column in the CSS file.

Separate items

Here you can choose to separate the links by letter, with a custom separation header, or no separation at all.

Separation header

If the separation option is enabled, this is where you enter your separation text, which will be shown above each set of items. You can use %L to show the letter. For example, if you enter Links: %L then it will show Links: A, (list of links), Links: B, (list of links), etc…

Excluded link categories

This is a comma-separated list of the link category IDs you want to exclude from the list.

  1. 79
    baykaya
    8-28-10 7:53AM

    very nice this plugin

  2. 78
    Gouri
    6-16-10 11:32AM

    It’s a good idea to have a directory like listing of the links. Why don’t you develop it into a full fledged directory plugin with an option to submit link…

  3. 77
    Denny Schütze
    5-25-10 6:21PM

    Thank you. :)

  4. 76
    rob panes
    3-23-10 6:07PM

    I’ll give it a try. Maybe this plugin is useful. Ill try to make comments again.. thanks anyway..

  5. 75
    tomi
    2-19-10 9:20PM

    thanks for plugin
    i’ll try it

  6. 74
    Kermit Woodall
    2-4-10 11:13AM

    You should bundle the CSS into a directory for the plugin and put this on the Wordpress.org site so it’s easier for others to install and update.

  7. 73
    Marko
    1-21-10 8:56AM

    Any idea why this is not working with Cyrillic characters? When you have one or more Cyrillic link names list just breaks at some point and dont show neither Cyrillic nor some (presumably links entered after Cyrillic links names) latin links.
    Any help is much appreciated.
    Thanks

  8. 72
    Pim
    1-20-10 2:51PM

    Dandy plugin! Thanks :D
    Can the seperations also be made per link category? Not by the first letter? That would be awesome!

    Thanks in advance :)

    Pim
    (The Netherlands)

  9. 71
    Jose
    1-18-10 1:08AM

    instead of naming the categories to be excluded will it possible instead to point only to the categories we want displayed?

  10. 70
    Ozan
    1-6-10 6:11PM

    It is great plugin. Thanks guys

  11. 69
    cocopeat
    1-2-10 9:53PM

    Please make such plugins more. thx

  12. 68
    cocopeat
    1-2-10 9:50PM

    It is great plugin. Thanks guys

  13. 67
    Kapila Abeysekara
    1-2-10 1:28AM

    Awesome! Thanks a lot!

  14. 66
    Solo Life
    12-3-09 11:56PM

    Great, hebat banget ya. Thanks

  15. 65
    Anthony
    11-21-09 6:54AM

    Would love to be able to re-order the link categories as well, instead of being stuck with alphabetical order.

  16. 64
    Mike
    11-2-09 5:07PM

    Hello again,

    Since the plug-in doesn’t appear to work with page id’s I just removed the page widget and copied and pasted all the page links into the links category and installed the link list plug-in. It works great, just what I wanted but just wondering if this could cause any problems with any of the search engines having so many links? Google especially bothers me.

    thanks

  17. 63
    Mike
    11-2-09 2:15PM

    Hi, great plug-in,

    I didn’t see an answer to comment #54 and was wondering the same thing.

    Can a list be done with page_id instead of the cat id?

    thanks

  18. 62
    Darren
    10-16-09 8:18AM

    Is there a link where I can simply see an example of a few 2-column samples in action?

  19. 61
    Pedro Puppim
    9-22-09 10:18PM

    good!

  20. 60
    ram
    9-10-09 8:07AM

    http://www.domesticyatra.com is a website that provides air tickets, i need to configure wordpress

  21. 59
    Jesse
    8-29-09 2:36PM

    This plugins works great! but how can we change the Letter to the Real Title of Main Categories.

    Thanks

  22. 58
    Chris M
    8-28-09 4:04AM

    The category exclusion won’t work, because the field “link_category” is not populated in the links table. The way you can work about this is by manually add a number into the table for the various records.

    Bad fix, but it works :)

  23. 57
    emily
    8-7-09 12:44PM

    i have my links already sorted into categories and would like to preserve those categories rather than sort them into alphabetical order or without any categorisation whatsoever.
    is there a way i can do that?

    http://mock-heroic.net/link-list/

  24. 56
    XajaxPerfect
    7-8-09 11:22AM

    And as I sort by category …

  25. 55
    Admin
    7-7-09 8:17PM

    This plugin has been tested, and works, in the latest release of WordPress – 2.8

  26. 54
    Jeremy Meyers
    5-11-09 2:00PM

    Would it be possible to get the equivalent plugin adapted to make a multi column page list? (for all the pages on a site)

  27. 53
    Brittany
    5-6-09 3:03AM

    I’ve installed the plug in, and it’s working great. However, there is some generated text I can’t seem to get rid of.

    D
    o Development Blog
    o Documentation

    P
    o Plugins

    S
    o Suggest Ideas

    S
    o Support Forum

    T
    o Themes

    W
    o WordPress Planet

    It’s in two seperate columns. Thanks

  28. 52
    OPC
    3-31-09 11:52AM

    It won’t open the links in a new window when you choose _blank in Wordpress 2.7.1

  29. 51
    Dree
    3-14-09 6:05PM

    and for SEO purposes a rel=”nofollow” would be nice.

  30. 50
    Dree
    3-12-09 8:13AM

    Thanks for the plugin. I have a small suggestion to add the link description in the title tag of the link. All you’ve got to do is add link_description to the query and in the link output. Hope it will help someone.

    $link_list = (array)$wpdb->get_results(”
    SELECT link_url, link_name, link_description
    FROM {$tp}links
    WHERE link_visible = ‘Y’
    {$exclude_sql}
    ORDER BY link_name
    “);

    $t_out .= ‘link_url . ‘” title=”‘. $link_list[$c]->link_description .’”>’ . $link_list[$c]->link_name . ‘‘ . “\n”;

  31. 49
    Catherina
    2-26-09 1:15PM

    Thanks a lot! Very nice!

  32. 48
    Admin
    2-20-09 9:42PM

    This plugin has been tested in the latest release of WordPress (2.7.1)

  33. 47
    Teresa
    1-24-09 8:38PM

    Does this plugin work with WP 2.7???
    Cheers!

  34. 46
    brian
    11-25-08 7:33PM

    To the best of my ability I have followed directions and looked through comments.
    all that shows up on my page is Any suggestions?

  35. 45
    deagib
    11-18-08 7:00AM

    Thanks for this great plugin. It was just what I wanted. I noticed that both plugins won’t work on the same page (category and link listing).

  36. 44
    Crni
    8-28-08 10:54AM

    Hello

    Can you help me please? When I want to exclude some categories it doesn’t do anything. I’m inserting in field for that category ID’s, such as numbers 2,13 etc. Is that the right way to write only numbers or I need to add something else?

    Thank you.

  37. 43
    betzy
    8-19-08 3:49AM

    heloo … is there a posibiliti to display in one page one category of links and in the other page another category ?? if is that posibile pls tell me how

  38. 42
    Ashley
    8-10-08 2:57PM

    I think #33 was asking about this also. I’d like to have the description that I added for each link in the admin panel to be in each link’s title tag so you can see it when you hover on the link. Is there an easy way to do this?

    Thanks for the great plugin. I’ve been using it for a while now.

  39. 41
    snez
    7-15-08 11:35AM

    For those of you who are having trouble with the links coming out in a list rather than columns, reduce the width of the column in the .css file. Reduce it well until it works. That’s what I did. Turns out the columns just couldn’t fit in my sidebar.

  40. 40
    Steve Tenebrini
    7-9-08 10:54AM

    I have a problem I see others have had that has yet to be answered.
    installed the plugin. It displays the links fine. Separated or not but it won’t break into columns…

  41. 39
    Benn
    6-5-08 11:22AM

    Is there a call to seperate by category name rather than by alphabetical?

  42. 38
    Andy
    5-4-08 11:02AM

    As always, this is a great plugin from DagonDesign. But it doesn’t seem to be working correctly in 2.5. The excluded categories still show (their ID number isn’t even listed in 2.5 and the slug makes the whole list disappear). Descriptions and notes don’t show either. Lastly, I’d make the same request as Kevin (35) for a future improvement. Thanks.

  43. 37
    Jeton
    3-26-08 5:39PM

    I got the plugin but it changes all my link collors from white to blue i have no idea what is the problem any one please help after i disable the plugin they go to white again

  44. 36
    Jean-Pierre
    3-21-08 8:58PM

    Hello,

    Nice work. I was wondering if there is a way to open links in a new page?

    Thanks!

  45. 35
    Kevin
    3-18-08 4:28PM

    is there any way to have this plugin output the links image?
    Thanks!

  46. 34
    simon ovidiu
    3-17-08 4:51AM

    Great plugin indeed. I have the same question as commenter nr. 25
    José Luís. Is there a chance it would group links by category?

  47. 33
    simon
    3-12-08 3:16AM

    Hi, thanks for the plugin. I would also be nice if we have the option of placing the ‘excerpt/description’ of the link for each link in the columns =P.

  48. 32
    Peter Lurie
    2-29-08 4:40AM

    Hi!

    Thanks for this great plugin.

    Are there any plans to add sorting or at least displaying by Categories? It would transform a wonderful plugin into a great one.

    Many thanks
    Peter

  49. 31
    Alan Kellogg
    1-31-08 3:08PM

    You leave too much out. Where in the theme directory do you put the CSS file? What do you do when you follow directions and the only thing you get is the bloody code on the page? Do you even know what you’re doing.

  50. 30
    Sarah
    1-7-08 8:01PM

    As with other people, the exclude option is not working.

    Any fix for this?

  51. 29
    Eddie
    1-3-08 9:33AM

    Thanks for the plugin. How can I add and display the post count for each category? Like this:

    categoryA (2)
    categoryB (4)

    I am not a programmer so will appreciate that if there is any handy code available for sharing. Thanks!

  52. 28
    Frank Luas
    12-26-07 2:50PM

    WordPress: v2.3.1
    MySQL: v5.0.45-community-nt
    PHP: v4.4.7
    Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0

    Plugin does not generate an error but I don’t get multiple columns. I do get an extra space in the midst of the column where it should break.

    Regards.

  53. 27
    negative
    12-2-07 6:54PM

    hello,

    is it possible:

    .ddmcl {
	width: 200px;
}

    and I have 2 cols on 420px tab. the question is: is it possible to put a gap of 20px between those two cols.

    thanks!

  54. 26
    juan borzi
    11-7-07 2:07PM

    Hi,
    i have problems with the plugin.
    The plugins works and looks great but it isn’t excluding the link categories.
    I put the line “echo $exclude_sql;” the result is:

    AND link_category != 9 AND link_category != 2

    Any idea how to solve it?
    Thanks in advance.

    Juan

  55. 25
    José Luís
    10-15-07 3:55PM

    I used Categorical Links Page but it is not WP2.3 compatible…

    But your plugin is Great! Is there a chance it would group links by category?

  56. 24
    Melissa
    10-12-07 3:04AM

    The plugins works and looks great but it isn’t excluding the link categories I tell it to, any ideas on how to fix that small issue would be greatly appreciated as blog cash links certainly don’t belong in the daily links section *sniffles*

    If you need to view just go here: http://www.comotized.com/the-internet

  57. 23
    Crystal
    10-10-07 7:54PM

    I’m having the same problem as Ali, mine is showing as just a list and not columns.

  58. 22
    SEO Blog
    10-9-07 1:35AM

    Hi, thanks for the plugin. I would also be nice if we have the option of placing the ‘excerpt/description’ of the link for each link in the columns =P.

  59. 21
    David
    10-4-07 9:23AM

    I have question; My friend have Wordpress 1.5 and do You know about this plugin will be to woerk on this Wordpress. Thank’s

  60. 20
    Admin
    9-29-07 5:27PM

    Version 1.3 Released

    This version adds support for WordPress 2.3, and a ‘Load Default Options’ button has been added to the options page. The Javascript (click to expand) feature has been removed, due to problems with it.

  61. 19
    Alisha
    6-20-07 11:14AM

    I agree with Nan, it would be nice if the lists with the headers would validate. I would also love to see this with an option for a categorical list. I can’t figure out why the lists aren’t hidden to start with, I have to click on the headers to hide them.

  62. 18
    Nan
    6-10-07 3:59PM

    I really like this plugin – Thanks. I would love if future versions also validated though!

  63. 17
    Kate
    6-4-07 10:00AM

    As for the previous question – I already solved it. There were “too many uls” in the generate function and that is why the java script for hiding didn’t work properly. I hope the fact I removed one pair of uls will not destroy the whole concept in some place I don’t expect (I don’t know anything of java)? For now – it didn’t :)
    Anyways – wonderful plugin
    Thank you
    Cheers

  64. 16
    Kate
    6-3-07 7:15AM

    My list diplays perfectly fine.
    Thank you for a wonderful plugin
    I only have one question (simple I hope)
    When the page loads all the heads are expanded and only close when i click on them. What do I need to do so that they behave in an opposite way ie are closed by default and open when clicked?

  65. 15
    Nitish Gautam
    5-8-07 12:38PM

    hey,
    mine dosent show anything at all!..whats the problem?

    its just a blank post.

  66. 14
    Admin
    4-30-07 11:07PM

    Ali: Did you upload the CSS file to your theme directory?

  67. 13
    Ali
    4-30-07 8:43AM

    As well, my links aren’t showing up as columns, they’re just one big list.

  68. 12
    Ali
    4-30-07 7:25AM

    I’m not seeing the option to separate by ‘custom separation headers,’ all I see is the option to separate by alphabetical order or to not separate them.

  69. 11
    Lea
    4-26-07 11:08PM

    Is there a way to have the description appear as well? Thanks!

  70. 10
    Justin
    4-22-07 4:00PM

    I’m having a problem excluding categories also. I added the line that you told mk to, and got this:
    AND link_category != 9 AND link_category != 47

    9 and 47 are the categories I’m trying to exclude, but they are still showing up. I’m also using Wordpress 2.1.2.

  71. 9
    Admin
    4-16-07 11:31PM

    mk: Find this line:

    $link_list = (array)$wpdb->get_results("

    And add this above it:

    echo $exclude_sql;

    Then view your page and let me know what it says. It should display the string it is using to exclude the IDs. Then you can remove the line of course.

  72. 8
    mano
    4-15-07 4:41AM

    this is awesom! one million thanks!

  73. 7
    mk
    4-14-07 11:51PM

    I have found the same problem it doesn’t exclude the ids that I place in the exclude list (this is in wp 2.1.3)

  74. 6
    Admin
    2-14-07 7:38PM

    Dan: Yes, there is a note above that mentions the fact that this plugin does not sort by category.

    Olen: Glad it works :)

  75. 5
    Olen
    2-14-07 10:16AM

    Figured out my problem–I had to list the old (pre-2.1 update) category IDs. They changed during the upgrade. Now it’s perfect. Thanks!

  76. 4
    Dan Hurley
    2-14-07 9:44AM

    The plugin works just as you describe; however, my list is very long and must be broken into named categories, preferably in alphabetic order (i.e. Organic Farms, USDA, Dairy Economics, Poultry, etc…). A very nice plugin for most users, I guess, but inadequate for my needs. But thanks, and for your other great plugins.

  77. 3
    Olen
    2-14-07 7:09AM

    Great plug-in, got it going immediately. However, I can’t get it to exclude categories. In the options page, under the exclude section, I typed

    15,16

    To exclude those categories, but they still show up on the <!-- multicollinks --> list. (which is here: http://www.contemporary-nomad.com/?page_id=514 )

    Any ideas?

  78. 2
    Thaiwordpress Wordpress Social » Blog Archive » WordPress Plugin Releases for 2/14
    2-14-07 12:41AM

    [...] Multi Column Link List generates an alphabetical listing of your WordPress links in multiple columns. You can choose the number of columns to display, with an option to split up the list of links by letter. [...]

  79. 1
    Weblog Tools Collection » Blog Archive » WordPress Plugin Releases for 2/14
    2-14-07 12:12AM

    [...] Multi Column Link List generates an alphabetical listing of your WordPress links in multiple columns. You can choose the number of columns to display, with an option to split up the list of links by letter. [...]

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