How to Organize your Link Party Page

I have always hated how my Link Party page looks.  The thumbnails were unevenly spaced (my OCD insides were screaming!), all the buttons were different sizes, and everything just looked extremely unprofessional.  There had to be a better way to organize things.

Then, I came across a post about using InLinkz to organize all of your old posts.  After looking into it and realizing what a fantastic idea it was, I decided to try it on my link parties page.

Depending on what you’re using Inlinkz for, you can use it for free.  Since I’m using it for old archives and link parties, I don’t have to pay a dime.  But, if you’re hosting a link party then you will have to pay for some of the services.  It’s very reasonably priced though so it will not be hard on your wallet.

Okay, let’s get started on the Link Page tutorial!

If you already have an account, go ahead and sign in.  If not, sign up and activate your account.  Then, you’ll have to choose whether you want to use the link-up tool or the project manager tool.  Click the project manager because we’ll be working exclusively in the dashboard.

This is what my dashboard looked like before I got started.

Next, you’re going to click Add new collection, which is above the dashboard.  A collection is what you’re grouping links under.  So, for this project I made a collection called, “Linky Parties: Sunday”.  I have used the same title for the Name and Description just because I don’t see the need to make them different (I don’t think it matters anyway).  You also always want to make sure the columns are full width so it looks right when you finally post the code on your page.  How big you want your thumbnails and whether you want to display the post name is up to you.

Once you’ve made a new collection you’ll have to start adding your links.  Since I re-did my link parties page, I put the name of the link party in the first four boxes.  Then, I put the link to the website in the URL box.

Once you’ve filled in all the boxes it’s time to add your photo.  There are a few different ways to do this:

When I was working on my archives pages, I used the Select from web page tab because I was linking the picture to a specific post.  For the linky parties page I wanted to use a specific picture that was (usually) not on the home page of the blog it originated from, so I used the Image URL tab.

I went back to my link party page and right clicked on a picture.  Then, I clicked ‘copy url image’ and pasted that into the Image URL tab on the InLinkz page.

When you get to the point where you can crop your photo, you’ll see a little box that’s checked that says Square Thumbnail.  I love having everything the same size, so I check it.  You don’t have to.  Especially if you need the entire picture to show up on the page.

Once you’ve gotten all of that done, you’re going to add the new link to your collection. Just drag the link from the left size of the page into the grey box (see below).

Once you’ve loaded all the links you want in your collection, it’s time to get the code for your website.  Click the get script tab (it’s blue) and it’ll take you to where you need to go.

If you’re putting the code on a page, grab the static code (that’s what I used).  If you want to put the links in the sidebar, grab the script code.

After you’ve gotten the code, put it on your blog in either a page or sidebar depending on what you’re using it for.  I used it for my link party page so the code was put in a page. And now, my link party page looks great!

Let’s have one more look, shall we?

So, what’s so great about InLinkz?

• Anytime you add something new to your blog you can easily go back and add it to InLinkz.  You just have to copy and paste the code into your page or sidebar, update it, and you’re good to go!
• It’s FREE!  I honestly can’t say this enough.  I mean, who doesn’t love free things?
• It’s user-friendly.
• You can use the exact same method above to organize and categorize your archives.

What have you used InLinkz for lately?  Or do you use another plugin or code that you like better?  Let me know in the comments below!