Homepage getting stale? Add a del.icio.us linkroll to your site. A what? If you’re not familiar with del.icio.us, read this. Otherwise, proceed…

A linkroll is just a bit of code that takes your del.icio.us account and creates a self-updating feed of links that you can insert anywhere on your site. It’s a great way to add value to your site and keep your homepage or news page content fresh and revolving. Here’s how to get started:

  1. Sign up for a del.icio.us account for your organization
  2. Start posting industry-specific links to your account – anything you come across that might be of interest to your visitors. You can even post links to your own content.
  3. Go to “settings” within your del.icio.us account and click onlinkrolls (it’s under the Blogging heading or fifth column).

The linkroll page gives you some display options such as how many links to display at a time, whether or not to display notes, etc. When you have the linkroll customized to your liking, you simply grab some automatically-generated javascript and insert it into your page.

I created an example here.

Written by

Fred Simmons

As a Managing Partner and the Director of User Experience at Gulo, Fred enjoys making website interactions more natural and improving UX design. Outside of work, Fred enjoys golf, BBQ, craft beer, movies where the bad guy wins, comma-separated lists, and talking about himself in the third person.