Link Directory

Include a directory on your site,
where visitors can add links.

The link directory script enables you to maintain a categorized listing of links on your site, where visitors can add their link, or view links left by others.

Follow the steps below to easily add a link directory to your site. Users familiar with HTML can fully customize the link directory page, or add multiple directories to their site.

A link directory sample is available:

How to Add a Link Directory

Follow these steps to add a link directory to your web site.

Create your link directory data file
Create your link page
Customize categories and page layout

Create Your Link Directory Data File

Use Notepad (or similar text editor) to open a new text file, and enter the following line (replacing "linkpage" with your preferred name for your HTML link page):

filename = /linkpage.html

Save the file as "filename.links.txt" (replacing "filename" with your preferred name for the link directory data file).

Upload this file to your "freeCGI" directory, which is one level above your document root ("htdocs"). Use FTP or Webby to upload your file (you cannot access this directory with FrontPage).

Create Your Link Page

Create a new file called "linkpage.html" (replacing "linkpage" with the exact same name you entered into the data file above). This file should contain the following HTML (replacing "Link Page" with your preferred page title, "filename" with the data file name you provided above, and all instances of "Category1", "Category2" and "Category3" with your preferred link category names):

<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>Link Page</TITLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY>

<H1>Link Page</H1>
<FORM METHOD="POST" ACTION="/cgi-t/links.cgi">
<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="file" VALUE="filename.links.txt">
Link Title: <INPUT TYPE="text" NAME="title" SIZE="50"><BR>
Link URL: <INPUT TYPE="text" NAME="url" SIZE="50"><BR>
Link Category: <SELECT NAME="section">
<OPTION>Category1</OPTION>
<OPTION>Category2</OPTION>
<OPTION>Category3</OPTION>
</SELECT><BR>
<INPUT TYPE="submit" VALUE="Add Link">
</FORM>
<HR>
Category1

<HR>
Category2

<HR>
Category3


</BODY>
</HTML>

Upload this file to your document root ("htdocs") directory.

Accessing Your Link Page

Point your browser to http://www.yourname.com/linkpage.html (where "yourname" is your actual domain name, and "linkpage" is the name of your new link page). Visitors can submit their own link from this page, or view categorized links that others have submitted.

Customizing Your Link Page

The above code sample is intended to provide a starting point for your link page. Once you have verified that your link page is working correctly, you can edit this page to match the appearance of your site. You can use your preferred HTML editor, or edit the code directly. Just remember to retain the above form action, field names, and variables.

Adding Link Numbers and Timestamps

You can also include the following variables in your link page.

To display the number of links:

To display a timestamp specifying when the link was added:

Deleting Links

To delete entries from your link page, simply open the page using FTP, Webby, or your preferred HTML editor, and remove the entries you no longer require. When deleting links, be careful not to delete the comment tags.

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