Nora Brown Design

Link it; link it good

One of the unique things about writing for the web is the ability to link to other texts, pictures, resources, etc. While it may seem counter-intuitive to send your readers away to other sites, linking can add to your credibility by showing you’re in touch with what others are saying.

So, how do you create links in your posts? There are several ways.

External links

• For a simple external link (a link to another site) you can use the Textile formatting: "linktext":http://www.anothersite.com. This will show in your post as linktext.
• You can also add a title to your link (which shows up as a “tooltip” in most browsers”: "linktext(title here)":http://www.anothersite.com. This will look like: linktext. Hover over this last link to see the title show up. You should use a title when the actual text you are linking does not make it clear where the link will take the reader. For more on the why and when of titles, check out Dive into Accessibility’s take on them.

Internal links

Don’t neglect internal linking. This is a good way to direct users to older posts on related topics, and save you from having to repeat yourself.

• Linking to a specific post will normally look something like: "my older post":/section/my-older-post. The “section” will vary depending on which section the post is in, most commonly “article,” “articles,” “blog,” “journal,” or similar.
• If your blog is only a subdomain of an otherwise static site (as mine is), your internal link may look like "my older post":/subdomain/section/my-older-post.
• If you’re not sure about all this “subdomain” and “section” stuff, just navigate to the article you’re linking to in a browser, and check out the url. For example, let’s say I’d like to link to an old post called “Making Edits.” By looking at the url in my browser’s address bar, I can tell that the subdomain is “blog” and the section is “article.”
  

  Address bar showing url of post

  
  Thus my link should be formatted: "my post on making edits":/blog/article/making-edits, which will display as: my post on making edits.
• To link to a whole section, rather than a single post, simply leave off the /specific-post. So a link to the article section of my blog would look like "my blog":/blog/article, or my blog.