[wp-trac] [WordPress Trac] #21307: Remove Link Manager from core

[WordPress Trac]

#21307: Remove Link Manager from core
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 Reporter:  nacin           |       Owner:
     Type:  task (blessed)  |      Status:  new
 Priority:  normal          |   Milestone:  3.5
Component:  General         |     Version:
 Severity:  normal          |  Resolution:
 Keywords:  has-patch       |
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Comment (by mdgl):

 Replying to [comment:70 avcascade]:
 > Why does Link Manager need to be removed from core? Why not keep it, but
 allow it to be disabled? That, to me, is the best solution... though if I
 had my druthers, I wouldn't mess with Link Manager at all. Don't "fix"
 what isn't broken.

 I think there are two reasons why Link Manager is being removed from core:

 1) The idea of "blogrolls" and lists of links is seen as rather old-
 fashioned these days, with "search" becoming the dominant way of finding
 content.  Yes, you still see lists of links around these days, but much
 less frequently as a few years ago.

 2) The is a lot of special code within WP just to handle links, because
 they are stored in the "wp_links" database table rather than "wp_posts"
 like the rest of the site content. The direction that WP is going as a CMS
 means that everything is becoming a [custom] post type so that we can
 share all of the code for managing them. This will make WP smaller, faster
 (probably), more reliable (hopefully) and easier to maintain.

 A plugin could quite easily be created to define a custom post type for
 "external link" and replicate the old Link Manager functionality using the
 main body of the WP code.

 See also #14339 and #18781.

 That said, what WP is really missing as a CMS is the ability to handle
 "internal" links properly. Presently, the currently assigned permalink is
 copied every time you make such a link. This means that the links are
 broken if a post is subsequently renamed/deleted or if the site is
 rehosted or exported/imported to a different location. A proper CMS would
 (IMHO) manage these links against the internal database and only expand
 them when the page is rendered for display (with internal links to
 "external link" post types being automatically de-referenced). You could
 do this with a shortcode today but it would not be integrated with the
 rest of the WP admin tool.

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Ticket URL: <http://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/21307#comment:72>
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