bugfox blog

I got a request for Sean Hickey’s original aLinks code.

Here it is

Download

…but be warned that it has some serious bugs. However it includes features that are not in my fixed version.

Go here for my fixed version, which omits some broken features that I never got around to fixing (because I don’t use them.)

I had been happily using the “aLinks” WordPress plugin by Sean Hickey for quite a while. The plugin automatically generates links for keywords that you specify. Version 1 did everything that I wanted, but it broke when I upgraded to WordPress 2.6. I found that Sean had written a completely new aLinks 2.0, so I installed it and found that it mostly worked, though with some minor problems.

Then Sean seemed to vanish from the face of the Internet. His web server went off line, making it impossible to even send him an email, and has been that way for several months.

So I had no choice but to go into the source code and fix the bugs that were bothering me. Since the code is released under the GNU General Public License (GPL) I am making the revised plugin available to anyone who is interested.

Download

Bugs Fixed

1. aLinks failed to respect word boundaries when identifying keyphrases, causing links to be inserted in the middle of words.
2. aLinks was ignoring the “classes” setting which allows you to assign one or more CSS classes to the links.

Warning

If you are upgrading from aLinks 1.x you must first export your keyphrases to a file, then import them back in after you have installed version 2.0. Otherwise you will lose your keyphrases.

Other Notes

To install, unzip and copy the entire alinks directory to your wp-content/plugins directory.

The documentation is included as a PDF file in the alinks/includes directory.