Removing Link Manager / Blog Roll by changing settings in wp-admin/options.php

If you have upgraded your WordPress installation from a version prior to WP 3.5, you may still have the "Link Manager" or "Blog Roll" feature available in the sidebar of your website. It's important to note that this feature has been removed from newer versions of WordPress and is no longer maintained.

Link Manager or Blog Roll was a built-in feature in older versions of WordPress that allowed you to manage and display a list of links or blog rolls on your website. However, this feature was deemed obsolete and was removed by default from WP 3.5 and later versions.

To remove Link Manager or Blog Roll from your sidebar, you can remove it by changing a setting directly in the database, by accessing /wp-admin/options.php or via a php function:

Via /wp-admin/options.php
By changing the "link_manager_enabled" setting in wp-admin/options.php, you remove the Link Manager or Blog Roll functionality from your WordPress installation. To change via /wp-admin/options.php, search for the field "link_manager_enabled" and change from 1 (on) to 0 (off).

Via database
Firstly, open phpMyAdmin or an equivalent database management tool. Find and select your WordPress database in the left sidebar. Next, navigate to the table with a prefix of "options", which can for example be "wp_options" (note that the prefix may vary based on your installation configuration).

Once you have found the table, you can search for the row with "option_name" as "link_manager_enabled". Click on this row to edit the value. Change the value from "1" to "0" to disable Link Manager or Blog Roll.

Make sure to save the changes by clicking the "Go" or "Save" button in phpMyAdmin. Now you can refresh your site and check if Link Manager or Blog Roll has been disabled.

An alternative way is to add this code to your functions.php file:

update_option( 'link_manager_enabled', 0 );

If you regret, you can re-enable the link manager by adding the following line to your theme's functions.php file:

add_filter( 'pre_option_link_manager_enabled', '__return_true' );