Guest Post - Adding Links to Comments

A big thank you to Ray for this Guest Post... you can try it out on FFAF (Free For All Friday)


If you’re a regular reader of Philofaxy, you can’t help but have noticed what a helpful and informative community of commenters visit the site. In the regular Tuesday and Friday ‘Free For All’ topics, dozens of questions are asked and answered every week. Often, the commenter will add a web address that gives further information or serves as an example. Here’s an example of one:

 

I made that comment before I knew better, so the web address is not a hyperlink. That means you can’t just click it and be taken there. What you have to do instead is copy and paste the link into your browser bar. No biggie, but compare with this example:

Note this time that you are offered not a long web address, but simply some highlighted text. Click anywhere on the highlighted text (although not as it appears above: that’s just an image) and you’ll be taken to the address to which it’s linked.

Hyperlinks like this are easy to create and make it easier for readers of your comments to go and have a look at the page you’re recommending.

To insert a hyperlink into your comment, you just write a very simple piece of HTML code. Here is the format for a hyperlink:
 
<a href="http://yourlink.com"> your text </a>

When this is included with your comment, you’ll see a piece of highlighted text that simply says: your text and is clickable.

Let’s see an example. I want to add a link on FFAT to a great cartoon that I think is very fitting to the spirit of asking and answering questions. Here is the address: http://xkcd.com/1053/

Notice that I’ve included it here as a hyperlink so you can just click it and go there. Now I want to add it as a link in a comment on FFAT. What I want to say is this:

Here’s a cartoon I think is very relevant to this community.

I want the words ‘a cartoon’ to be clickable and to take readers to the relevant web address.

Here’s what I’ll need to post in the comment box:

Here’s <a href="http://xkcd.com/1053/">a cartoon</a> I think is very relevant to this community.

So here we go...

Hit the ‘publish’ button and here’s the result:

Next time you want to include a web address in your comments, why not try hyperlinking?

Thank you Ray, I forget that people don't necessarily understand HTML, it is a second language to me!