simple-links

Great plugin, does almost exactly what I want. Only missing a little adjustment in CCS because I use it as widget for country selector.

Exactly what I look for in a plugin. Does the job without bloat or needless complexity.

Has has the feature I needed without a bunch of bloat. Really slick short-code form. I ended up buying the Pro version because I liked the free version.

I hadn't used this plugin in a while for my own projects, just been support other users with their needs. This week a current project of mine needed a link manager and I thought, "Hey, I've seen one before". Worked like a treat. It was so nice to not have to design my project around a plugin and be able to just have a plugin solve a requirement that was already organically designed into the project. Thank goodness this plugin kept to the basics over the years and didn't become a swiss army knife of a plugin.

with the quirks, it's probably just as much maintenance as if I had pages of links I manually entered.

The idea to enhanced the wordpress links section is good. But any implementation should at minima reuse existing features of wordpress (such as said link section) and build on it. This plugin create a whole new system to manage link, totally incompatible with existing wordpress mecanisms. I know that using existing features can be a hassle, but with wide used cms like Wordpress, it's the way to go.