Bonus Post - How to Post a Link in a Comment

Have you ever noticed that some people know how to insert a link into their comment so it might say something like "To see what I'm talking about click here" and then when you float your pointer over the words click here your pointer changes to a little hand with the index finger pointing?  Then when you right click it takes you to a new place that the click here was linked to. On other comments you'll just see something like "Check this out at http://www.scottlawphotography.com" and if someone wants to go there they have to copy the web address and paste it in the address box in their browser.  You know people are more likely to go visit the place you are telling them about if all they have to do is click on something like "click here".  Would you like to know how they do that?

Most blogs' comments boxes will allow you to do it and here is how. You're going to use a little HTML code - don't let that scare you because it is very easy.    What you are going to enter looks like this

Sorry, but the only way I could get this to show without actually becoming a link was to enter it as a graphic.  Anyway the first part with the "<" arrow and the "a href=" simply tells the system that you are now pointing to something and not to display that code or what is between the quotation marks.  Of course what is between the quotation marks is the place that the system is pointing to.  Finally the words between the ">" and the "<" are what will show as a link that the reader will click on the get where you want them to go.  Built into your blog code are the instructions that tell your computer how to display those words to make it apparent that they are in fact a link, such as underlined and blue.

As an example let's say you want to share your sunset shot with everyone on Sunset Sunday and you want to write something like "Take a look at my fabulous sunset shot".  You want the words "fabulous sunset shot" to be the link words, so it looks like this "Take a look at my fabulous sunset shot" (You don't need the quotation marks).  You would simply type something like this:

Oh, I meant to put a period after the word "shot" like I did in "click here." above.  The point is that whatever you put between those two arrows is what will show.  and if I needed to fix that I could simply put a period after the last ">" and the reader would never know except it would be the same color as the rest of the text instead of the "link" text.

Now, so you know, I'm kind of lazy and so I have created a file with the windows notepad which you can find under accessories if you click on "Start > All Programs > Accessories.  I use that because it has no built in formatting that might accidentally copy over when I use copy and paste.  In that file I have a number of the lines of code like you see above and then all I have to do is go copy a URL (web address) and paste it between the quotation marks and then change the words I want to show such as "fabulous sunset shot" -again WITHOUT the quotation marks unless you want them to show also.  Then once I've got it just the way I want it I copy the whole line and paste it into my comment.  That way I don't have to try to remember the exact format for the HTML code and I get it right every time.

Okay, so it's a little more work than just copying and pasting your URL to the bottom of the post, but it makes it much easier for people to get to whereever you are trying to send them, then more people will go there and isn't that what your goal was anyway.  Good luck and I hope to see lots of nice links to your Phun Phriday! posts and Sunset Sunday posts in the future. 

Don't be shy - leave a comment or email me.  I look forward to hearing from you!

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