Introduction

The link importing function of LinkX allows you to quickly add many links to the database. This document will provide an overview of the link importing process.

Import Data Format

To import links you will need to either place them in a text file or paste them into a text box in the link importing interface. In either case, the format needs to be the same. There should be only one link per line. Each line should have pipe (|) delimited data, with each field representing one piece of information about the link. The pieces may be in any order, but that order must remain the same throughout all of the links. For example:

user1@email.com|http://www.site1.com/index.html|Site #1 Title|Description of site #1|Roger
user2@email.com|http://www.site2.com/main.html|Site #2 Title|Description of site #2|James
user3@email.com|http://www.site3.com/index.php|Site #3 Title|Description of site #3|Susan

The above example has three links each with an e-mail address, site URL, site title, description, and submitter name. Once you have your links in the proper format, you can begin the importing process.

Control Panel Interface

To use the link importing feature access the Links > Import Links function from the control panel menu. This will load a page where you will be able to tell the software if you want to import from a file that you uploaded or if you want to paste your link data into the supplied text box. Each option is explained on the link importing interface. You will need to press the Analyze Input button if you have pasted data into the text box or the Analyze File button if you are importing from an uploaded text file.

After you press the correct Analyze button you will be taken to a page where you will see the first link split out into it's individual fields. On the left hand site of the Import Data section you will see drop down menus. From these menus you will need to select what each field represents. If one of the pieces of data for the link does not fit into any of the drop down menu options, select the IGNORE option. LinkX will ignore all the IGNORE fields when importing the links.

In addition to assigning each of the fields from the data you are importing, there are three additional items that you will need to setup. Each of those items are described below.

Categories	Select at least one category for the links to be placed in. This uses the Category Selector interfrace. If you have included the category information in the import data, you do not need to select a category here
Status	Select the status to assign to the imported links or 'From Import Data' if you have included the status in the import data.
Type	Select the type to assign to the imported links or 'From Import Data' if you have included the type in the import data. If you select Premium or Featured, enter an expiration date in the text input box following the drop down selection field.

Once you have each of the fields setup how you want it, press the Import Links button. LinkX will begin importing the links from the data you have provided. Once it is complete, you will be returned to the link importing interface with information on how many links were imported.

Including Categories in the Import Data

As of version 1.1.0 you can include categories directly in the import data rather than selecting the categories that the links will be imported into. This will allow you to import links into many different categories at once instead of having to import individually for each category. When including the categories in the import data, there are a few rules that you will need to follow:

1. Categories must always be provided as their full path. You cannot simply provide the name of a sub-category in the import data.
   
   
2. Category names and mod_rewrite URLs are case-sensitive, so the categories that you include in your import data much match exactly with the information stored in the LinkX database.
   
   
3. The full path can either be the path as it appears in your mod_rewrite URLs or the path as it appears in the Manage Categories interface. For example, if you were importing a link into the "Algorithms / Sorting and Searching" category, your import data could look like this: user1@email.com|Algorithms / Sorting and Searching|http://www.site1.com/... Or like this: user1@email.com|algorithms/sorting-and-searching|http://www.site1.com/...
4. You can import links into multiple categories during the import by providing a list of every category separated by a double-colon (::) For example, to import a link into both the "Algorithms / Compression" and "Programming / C++" categories, you would use this: user1@email.com|Algorithms / Compression::Programming / C++|http://www.site1.com/... Or this for the mod_rewrite URL format: user1@email.com|algorithms/compression::programming/c-plus-plus|http://www.site1.com/...

Field Formats

Some of the items that you may want to import have specific formats that must be met in order for the galleries to be imported correctly. Each of those is discussed below.

Status	Possible values: unconfirmed, pending, active, or disabled
Type	Possible values: regular, premium, or featured
Expires	YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS
Date Added	YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS
Date Modified	YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS