If you’ve been to the widget wizard today, you maybe have noticed something new. It’s the EASY-LINKY! It’s just like the auto-linky but doesn’t require any changes to your blog’s header or other template files. Just drop the code into your post and you’re done. In a word, it’s EASY!

What’s different about the easy-linky, on the technical side, is the magic that the header code does provide now has to be part of every widget. Because that makes the easy-linky quite a bit more resource-intensive, you’ll need to be a gold member to use it.

But wait, there’s more! UPDATE — Yes, more!! A brand new Gold member benefit, long awaited, has finally arrived! It’s toolbar support! Just run the widget wizard and choose the auto-linky or easy-linky widget, and then after the widget wizard shows you your code, it will offer you a bookmarklet — just drag it to your toolbar and you’ll never (or hardly ever) have to visit the widget wizard again! You’re welcome! :)

A few people have asked me this, so I’d better write it up here. One of these days you’ll be able to get just two columns (or one) through the widget wizard, but that day, unfortunately, isn’t today.

You can get two columns instead of three if you add “&columns=2” to the end of your script url

So instead of…

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.blenza.com/linkies/autolink.php&owner=yournamehere&postid=23Sep2008"></script>

…it would look like…

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.blenza.com/linkies/autolink.php&owner=yournamehere&postid=23Sep2008&columns=2"></script>

Be careful cutting/pasting from this blog — if you want to switch to two-columns, just copy this…

&columns=2

…and paste it into the right spot in your post, rather than copying the whole script tag from here — sometimes it gets messed up when people do that.