Internal Linking Between Posts in WordPress 3.1

WordPress 3.1 RC2 was released yesterday, which means the final release is just on the horizon. One of the major user interface upgrades is the internal linking feature, something I’ve been trying to find a plugin or other solution for over a year and a half. I briefly tried out RB internal links plugin, but that was just overly clunky and didn’t save me that much time. Naturally I was excited to try it out and upgraded my site to the bleeding edge release.

I was severely disappointed.

I only use the html view within most of my installs. I couldn’t find the new internal linking feature from HTML view, so I enabled the visual mode and found out how the feature works.

When constructing a normal link, you need to highlight the text that will become the anchor, and then click the chain link icon.

But now, you have a drop down option called “Or link to existing content”. You have a search field, where you can type in search term to find the related post, click the selected post and hit the “Add Link” button.

I think that this internal linking feature falls flat in two important ways. First, that you can only see it from one editing view, and second, if you ever go back and change or optimize your post slug or change your site architecture your link will be broken. WordPress inserts the full absolute url path, and not the actual post ID which will resolve itself.

In steps Crowd Favorite

Alex King is a smart guy, and his company Crowd Favorite develops plugins that solve crucial usability issues. Never fancy, their plugins just work and they support them for free – no small task.

Having similar feelings, Crowd Favorite stepped in and made their ‘Internal Link Shortcode‘ plugin which solves both problems.

After install, the plugin will include a simple lookup field in the sidebar. You can move that field wherever you like.

Type in your query and an AJAX call will pop up a list of old posts. Click the post to generate the bracketed post id shortcode. Copy that shortcode into your post and modify to fit the need. I love the idea of having the text attribute that allows you to set what the actual anchor text will be.

Check out the Internal Link Shortcode plugin

Building off what WordPress has added to the core, this is the functionality we’ve all been waiting to see – an easy, user friendly way to link to old blog posts.

What do you think of WordPress attempt for internal linking? Do you think they’ll make changes in a future release to use it with the HTML view as well?