Written retrospectively for the 2003 archive.

One of the things I like about early personal sites is how much a links page could tell you about the person behind it. A handful of useful links with a note beside each one made a page worth bookmarking.

To recreate one, make an unordered list and give each entry a link with a descriptive label. Add a sentence about what you found useful there. A link called “HTML reference” gives a reader more to go on than a link called “click here.”

Try opening the page and reading only the link labels. If they make sense without the descriptions, the page is easy to skim. Then click through them once before publishing. The notes make it easier to decide what to replace if an old destination disappears.