Achieving the perfect links list

For months and months and MONTHS, I’ve been neglecting and putting off updating my Links page. My links page has been somewhat cringe-worthy for ages now and hasn’t been exactly a good reflector of what blogs I actually read or, you know, what blogs actually STILL EXIST. ‘Twas a mess, ya’ll. But I still wanted to have a links list. I think back to all the blogs I found and now love because of someone’s links list (Amalah and Zoot, to name two big ones), and would like to be able to pass that chance on to someone else. And I’ve felt so guilty that perhaps I’m leading people astray, sending them to 404 pages and error messages galore. The horror! We can’t have that.

But deleting all my links and starting over by individually transcribing each and every subscription I have in Google Reader has seemed like an enormous, impossible task. I’m lazy at heart, you must remember, and that seemed like an awful lot of work. After all, I do have well over 100 subscriptions that I track and read every day as they update. How would I have time to read all those posts if I’m spending all my time typing up links? GAH.

That’s when, this morning, I was poking around in WordPress and noticed you can import links.

Import Blogroll screen in WordPress
I knew of this previously because people used to import their Blogrolling accounts and back when I designed blogs that was something I did fairly often. I wished there was a way to import from Google Reader, however. I didn’t see how it was possible since Blogrolling and Google Reader are two fairly different beasts. Still, I thought maybe I should check out what Google Reader DID offer. You know, just in case. And since I always have a Google Reader window open (have I mentioned how many blogs I read?), I clicked over and chose the “Settings” link that’s up in the top right corner of the window. From there, I couldn’t help but notice an “Import/Export” tab, located neatly between “Goodies” and “Friends”. I clicked on it and found this:

Export OPML file from Google Reader

Huh. Well, would you look at that! Not only can you export your subscriptions, but you can export them as an OPML file. Which, if you notice the screenshot above from the Wordpress screen, is what sort of file you can then import into WordPress. “I wonder…” Would it import the links to the blogs or the links to the RSS feeds? I decided I pretty much didn’t care at this point because it would still be less work for me and we all like the idea of that! I clicked the “Export” link and saved the file to my computer. So far, so incredibly easy.

Back to WordPress where I then uploaded the file like so:

Uploading the OPML file into WordPress

Before I knew it? Blogs were uploaded. And it wasn’t the RSS link, but rather the link to the site which, you know, YAY. Hundreds of sites listed on my blog in the blink of an eye! Too good to be true! All I had to do then was go in and delete all the old links which I did by Blogroll category. My links page automatically displayed the new category I created “Blogs I read” and the deleted links were “poofed”. Suh-wheet!

I imagine as things change over the months and years to come, it won’t be so difficult to go in and update this listing. And how happy am I to have found a good shortcut! I tell you what, this right here just totally made my day. Yes, I am that big of a dork.

Get the word out: