Active Link Exchange Help: Link Exchange Management.

The link exchange management workspace contains four main tabs or work areas to perform different functions when managing your link exchange network.



● Adding a web page manually:
To add new potential partner web pages you may use the Partner Research Wizard or you can add them manually. To add a new web site manually click on the Add link button from the Preview tab or just select "Project/Add new link" from the program's main menu.



From the Add Web Site window enter the web site data.



- Url: enter the url of the web page you want to add to your list of potential link exchange partners.

- Get Information Online button: when clicking on this button Active Link Exchange will connect to the site and automatically retrieve its information from the web page meta tags, including title, description, contact name and email address (if available).

- Link text: the title of the web page as extracted automatically by the Get button or entered manually.

- Short description: the description of the web page as extracted automatically by the Get button or entered manually.

- Category: the category in your link exchange directory. If you do not wish to structure your link exchange project by categories the "General" category is assigned by default. You can manually assign a new category to a given link at anytime by just clicking on the Category field from the link list workspace.

- Link rank: if the web page would have been found by the Partner Research Wizard this would be the position in the search engine where it was found. You can enter your own values here when adding a link manually. A low value indicates that the site is important for your link exchange network.

- Contact name: the contact name as extracted automatically by the Get button or entered manually.

- Email address: the email address of the owner of the site as extracted from the web site automatically by the Get button or entered by you manually.

- Company name: optionally enter your partner company name.

- Exact Url of the partner link page: the web page address in your partner's site that contains a link back to your web site. You can leave this field empty and enter it later on as soon as you get a link back confirmation email from your partner.

- Notes: enter any notes or comments about the web page.

When you are done entering the web page data click on the "Add to List" button. You can edit all data entered at anytime by clicking on the Edit Link tab from the program's main screen.

● Adding an icon or logo for the web page:
If you want to display partner logos for each web site's listing in your link exchange web page you may get them automatically from any of the images located in a partner's web site. To extract a logo, select a link from the list and click on the "Edit Link" tab from the program's main screen, then click on the Get button located next to the "Icon or Logo of the partner site" field.



On the "Get Picture from Web Page" screen select from any of the images available.



- Web page Url: enter the web address from where you want to get the icon or logo. Active link exchange will default to the home page of the selected web site.

- Get button: click on this button to scan the selected web site for images. All available images will be downloaded and displayed when selected from the Image Url list.

- Image Url: contains a list of all available images and logos for the site. Click on any url from the list to select it. The selected image will display on the right panel.

When you have selected your preferred image for this partner listing click on the "OK" button. The selected image will be optionally displayed next to this partner listing when creating your link exchange web page using the Link Exchange Page Generator wizard.

● Generating your link exchange page:
When you are ready to generate your link exchange web page or want to modify an existing link exchange page you can run the Link Exchange Page Generator wizard by selecting "Project/Generate partner link page" from the program's main menu. Alternatively you can also click on the Generate button from the FTP work area.



The link exchange page generator wizard will open.



- Page: select "New" to create a new link exchange web page or "Open" to open a previously created link exchange web page.

- Page type: select "Catalog type" when you want to create a directory type link exchange web site listing links by categories (a web page will be created for each category in your link exchange project). Select "Single page" to create a single page containing all links without any category division.

- Page Layout: select one of the following layouts
The first option will create listings containing the logo and the link's description to its right.
The second option will display the logo and the description of the site below it.
The third option will contain the url and description of the site.
The fourth option contains the logo, the url and the description of the site.

Click on the "OK" button when done. The code generation window will open.

● Automatic html code generation for your link exchange page:



- Filter: select the links to be displayed in the selection box. By default "All links" in your link exchange project will be listed. You may, for example, want to display only new links you have recently found by selecting "Links found today" from the Filter drop down menu.

- Link list selection box: click on any link/s on the list that you want to be added to your link exchange web page.

- button: adds any links highlighted from the list of links on the left to the list of selected links on the right.
- button: removes any links from the list of selected links.
- button: adds all links in the list of links on the left to the list of selected links.
- button: removes all links from the list of selected links.

- Generate button: when you have selected the list of links to be added to your link exchange web page click on the "Generate" button. The html code for your link exchange web page is generated and displayed in the html viewer panel.

- Preview button: click on the preview button to display how the link exchange web page you have just generated will look like.

- Save button: saves the link exchange web page you have just generated as an html file in any folder of your choice.

- Run FTP button: when you have configured Active Link Exchange to use an external FTP program (from the FTP External client settings window) clicking on this button will open your FTP program so you can upload your link exchange web page to your server.

- Upload button: goes to Active Link Exchange FTP work area to upload your link exchange web page using the internal ftp module.

- Open button: opens an existing html link exchange web page that you have previously created and saved.

- Cancel button: exits the link exchange web page generator wizard.

● Creating a new email template:
When emailing link exchange partners from the "Send Email" work area you may use any of the existing email templates or create your own email body content by selecting "New Template" from the "Email templates" drop down box. you will find this feature very useful if you are sending emails in different languages or any time you want to include your own content in the body message.



The New Email Template window will open.



- Name template: enter the name of the new email template you are creating. It will be saved under this name for future use, available for selection from the "Email templates" drop down box at anytime.

- Subject: enter the subject of the email to be used when this new template is selected.

- Message box: you can type the body of your email freely in the message workspace.

- Template elements: you can use any of the variables displayed in the templates elements panel and include them in the body of your message. Active Link Exchange will extract the value of each variable for any given partner and include its value in the message body. This is a nice way to personalize your emails with individual partner data. Available fields include the partner name, his website url, listing title, description and category as well as your own name, company name, link exchange url and your site's home page url.

- button: add the variable selected in the template elements panel to your body message.

When you are done with your new email template click on the "OK" button. The new template will be saved and available for selection from the "Email templates" drop down box.