The Nuclear Moose asked the Universe for a plugin:
Think of it as a blogging footnote, or more appropriately, a linknote. What the quicktag could also do is add a superscript number beside the word or phrase you hyperlink, so that the reader would know that you have added a footnote (linknote?) which the reader can refer to after consuming the whole post.
And lo, the Universe served up one Jeremy Curry, who created the plugin WP-Linknotes. Moose tried it, and said It Was Good.
Moose’s desire for such a plugin was inspired by another blogger’s rant:
The author bemoaned the practice of having hyperlinks in the middle of a sentence–his point being that it’s likely that your reader will click on your link and off they go, perhaps never to return to your blog!
But I can’t see how a linknote plugin will prevent this. The reader can still be distracted by the superscript link—the clicking of which will take him to the actual link in a mini bibliography below the post— and ultimately off he’ll go, perhaps never to return to your blog anyway.
I always saw hyperlinks as a New and Improved version of footnotes, and while I’m itching to try the new plugin because it looks like FUN, is NEW, and very COOL, I’ll just hope the one reader I have (Hiya, Mom!!!) uses tabs.
You do use tabs, don’t you?
Mom?
Very good! Yea, your right, alot of people will simply just do what they always do with links, and open it right away. But, from the stand point I see it, it makes links obvious, but allows the user to continue. Now, with Linknotes at the bottom of the post, after they have finished, they can see what the links are exactly, with a little description. Also fun to see HOW many links you used in the post. It will serve different purposes for different people, but its neat, and new, and worth a shot, right? Any ways, keep up the good work!
Jeremy—you clever plugin writer, you—all the things you mention appeal to me greatly.
Hello, I want a plugin LIKE THIS EXCEPT it would make automatic footnotes of all hyperlinks in a post where the footnote would be the actual URL with the http://www typed out.
The reason?
So that on my “Print” CSS view, if a person actually prints a post, there will be footnotes with READABLE links that can be typed into a browser, not Hyperlinks on underlined words where the address is hidden.
Could you make this for me? Please email me if possible.
Wah! No way could I write a plugin. I can barely edit my WordPress files!
Write to Jeremy Curry and see if he’ll consider doing it. Or try the WordPress forum. Somebody else might have written something like it already!