Activelinks are a small png image that is part of a freesite. Activelinks are used when linking to another freesite. When a user loads a page with an activelink on it, loading the activelink image causes their node to fetch the container file for the site being linked to. This means that when the user clicks on the activelink, the load time will be dramatically reduced compared to a normal text link.
When creating an activelink image, it should be a png file named activelink.png. It should be 108 pixels wide by 36 pixels high. It should be located in the root of your freesite, so the URI for it is freenet:USK@crypto/sitename/0/activelink.png (or whatever edition your site is up to). You should also make sure that it resides in the main container file for the site -- otherwise it won't help anything! When linking to a site, check to see whether it has an activelink. If so, it is frequently wise to use it as the link text. Be sure to keep the USK edition in your link current.
You can verify that your activelink is set up properly using the KeyExplorer plugin. Use the plugin to explore the URI for your site. All the files in your site will be listed; it should look something like this:
0-0 [c] AIR / text/html /index.html
0-0 [c] AIR /activelink.png image/png /activelink.png
The [c] means that the files are stored in the container. Both your html files and activelink.png file should be in the container. For a small site, all your files should be in the container. For a large site, some images and other media should not be in the container -- the container has a size limit.
Using activelinks has three effects. First, since the activelink is in the main container file for the site, loading the activelink causes the user's node to also load all the html for the site (prefetching). This means that when they follow the link, their node doesn't have to fetch any data from the network. Second, it means that the container file is more widely available -- not all visitors to your freesite will click on all links to other sites, but they will all load activelink images from other sites that you use on your page. As a result, those sites' container files are more popular and therefore better distributed through the network, making them load faster. And lastly, it starts their node checking for USK updates (new versions of the site being linked to).
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