Excellent hack, thank you.
Can I please request an enhancement?
I want to list retailers on our site but it galls me somewhat that they will be getting free advertising.
I want to have 'premium' links which are displayed at the top and charge them for this service. I appreciate this might need a 'display order' field in the link table and admin page and the order sql will need the 'order by' bit changed. E.g. to order by displayorder ASC,title ASC etc
But I think being able to set a display order would be a useful feature.
I would, for example, set all normal links to a display order of 1 and all advertisers an order of 0 so the premium advertisers get listed alphabetically at the top.
It would also be great to be able to put a separator - just a small gap - between the premium links and the normal ones.
Is this something you'd be interested in adding do you think?

Thanks for your kind remarks.

Indeed, others have asked for something similar, and it's quite easy to add. I'll hav a look this weekend.

Thanks, Andrew.
Had another idea. Our links resource relates to audio visual resources. It includes manufacturers, distributors and retailers of AV gear. Very occasionally these companies don't have a website. In addition the retailers - partiularly those who are paying for a premium listing - would value having their phone number up there.
Is it at all possible to include entries where the link isn't active (because very occasionally the organisation has gone bust or doesn't have a website) and include a separate optional column for a phone number?
Thanks

I think I'll give this suggestion a miss. You can achieve a similar effect by setting up a small web page ("this site is no longer active") and using that as the link for entries that do not have a working web site.

If you send me an email, I'll reply with the beta code for your previous suggestion - display order + separator bars. The display and database code is written but not the admin code to modify the display order, so you have to use phpmyadmin.

Email sent, thanks.

I have found a small bug.
In the admin page listing of duplicate links, the links to the categories read as, for example:
& instead of ?

yep! thanks

Andrew,
based on initial usage, I have another important feature request.
Some links might mistakenly be put into wrong categories. Or people might not know which to use. In addition, people might use inappropriate wording in links trying to spam people etc.
I think a category specific 'instructions' text field displayed when adding a link would be very useful.
In this field, one could enter specific instructions guiding people on how to enter new links and warning them not to abuse the system.
Hope you agree this would be useful.

This is straightforward but there's a slight complication. Even though one is already within a category when chosing "Add Link", the new link can be entered into multiple categories at the same time, and even perhaps not into the one that is current. This "instruction" field would clearly only relate to the current category. OK?

Yes that would be fine.
It's mainly to give guidance on what is and isn't allowed to be posted in the link description. Today we had a retailer post an essay on how great they were.
That's not appropriate, obviously.