Links and Blogroll widgets missing

This is intentional, the Links/Blogroll sections were removed from new installs for WordPress 3.5. We suggest not using them anymore, as they will be removed completely in a future version.

But, if you really need these, this plugin will enable them again:
https://www.ads-software.com/extend/plugins/link-manager/

But honestly, if you just want to build a list of links for the sidebar, the “Menu” system is more suited to that. Any Menu you build can be added to the sidebar using the Menu widget.

Great, thank you for the help.

But with the menu option, I’m not seeing how to do a target=”_blank” function.
Which is pretty important for external links.

I didnt even use the bloggroll for external links, I just used it for popular pages etc. whick linked to pages within my site.

What was the thinking behind this? The theme I use only supports 1 menu and I use that for the main navigation.

It was discussed at length – you can read it in Trac – https://core.trac.www.ads-software.com/ticket/21307

I can’t find a way to make links placed in menus to open in separate windows. Is there a way to do this without using the Link Manager/blogroll solution that has been phased out?