As I am trying to exchange links with other sites, I have encountered sites that require my reciprocal link to be up first. When I submit my link request, they spider my site looking for their link. Because Links adds links using jump.cgi, these sites do not find their reciprocal link, and refuse to let me add a link.

Is there any way to make Links add a link using the raw URL of the site, instead of using jump.cgi? I know that the link is defined in the link.html template. Is there a variable that can be used to cause substitution of the URL of the site in the link? I have checked the Links doc, the FAQ and the discussion boards and didn't find anything on this.

(I know that doing this would defeat the automatic "what's cool" feature. I can live with that.)

Thanks,
Kurt

Never mind! I figured it out. I poked around in the links.def file and found the field definitions. I replaced the following code in the link.html file:

href="<%db_cgi_url%>/jump.cgi?ID=<%ID%>"

with this:

href="<%URL%>"

I crossed my fingers and rebuild the links, and hey presto! The links were generated with the site URL!

Now that I've spent my evening banging my head on this, I'll go read a book for the rest of the night and start trading links again tomorrow!

Kurt