Creating Links

Your imagination is your only limitation when it comes to establishing links. You can be subtle, you can use images, you can create lists, whatever form you want a link to take it can assume. The idea is to create a spot on your page that your visitor can press and be whisked away to somewhere else. A side note - they may not come back!

I'll cover the following areas:

• Links Embedded in Text
• Links as a List
• Checking Links

I'll save image maps for a much later topic but it's basically another form for creating links.

Let me give you some pointers on things I think you should avoid in creating links. You have to assume that your audience will have some knowledge about surfing. Even newbies will catch on real quick to the "click-to-surf" technique used to navigate around the web. You don't need to take it upon yourself to provide the instruction. Don't use phrases such as "click here to see...", "to get to my next page click here" and other phrases that assume your viewer has never seen a web page before.

Enough preaching, on with the topics!

Links Embedded in Text

This is an excellent device for providing additional information or illustrations for points you are making in your text. It is subtle, doesn't interrupt the main thought you are trying to make, and let's your viewer choose whether and when, they want to view the additional information.

As an example, if I were discussing certain popular rock stars such as Madonna or Eric Clapton I could simply use their names as links. If the viewer cared to learn more about the sites I selected to represent these artists then they simply click the mouse pointer anywhere on the highlighted text.

Creating this link is easy to do using the <A></A> tag. The purpose of this tag is to provide an "anchor" that is associated with the text accompanying it.

The code associated with the word "Madonna" in my example is:

<A HREF="http://www.odysseygroup.com/coll396/rock.htm">Madonna</A>

I went surfing (actually I cheated and used the Alta Vista search engine ) to find a suitable site that would provide the information I wanted to present to my reader.

Once I had the site I copied the address of the page. Again, I cheated and highlighted the address in my browser's "location" window and used the "Copy" function under the "Edit" menu. This saves the highlighted text (under Windows anyway). I brought up the spot where I wanted to put the link and keyed in <A HREF=" then I "Pasted" the address I had stored (you can simply key one in if you want) then I finished typing the rest of the line, ">Madonna</A>.

That's all there is to it!

One of the things I always forget to do is to put the closing " on the address. You'll spot this mistake right away if you make it. Using Netscape, the following text is displayed instead of the highlighted "Madonna" - <A HREF="http://www.odysseygroup.com/coll396/rock.htm>Madonna. That's pretty ugly isn't it?

Instead of text as the link I could have used a picture of Madonna. You would substitute the <IMG> tag and give it the name of the image you wanted to use. I've devoted a whole section to a discussion of images and that's where we'll cover this tag in more detail.

I hope your comfortable enough to insert links in your text. Now let's explore the more blatant use of links in the form of lists.

Links as a List

It seems like one of the most popular features on the Internet is the collection of links that everyone collects. From the lists on personal pages to the multi-million entries lists that the search companies own. These lists provide clues to the author's personality. I wouldn't be surprised if some new branch of psychology opened up that specialized in analyzing lists. "Big Brother" come on in - join the fun.

Your lists can be simple, left-aligned lists just giving the title of the page. Once you get over a handful of entries you'll be tempted to organize them into like groups and you'll be adding titles to the groups. You may be one of those that likes to alphabetize your lists. It's up to you.

When you construct your list, I recommend that you use the original page's title to be the link to the page. This helps you if you also keep your list in your bookmark file. It also avoids confusion for your readers. Sometimes you might want to add your own description since the title might not really tell what's on the next page. Then you can give a review if you want, similar to what I do on Mikey Likes It . If you have a lot of links this can become a real burden trying to maintain the descriptions. Plus it slows a surfer down when they have to scroll your page to see what all is there.

A sample of a very effective presentation of lists can be seen at Lady Hawk's Huge Linknest .

How do they do that stuff? Well let's take a look and then you can decide what to do with your lists.

Lady Hawk presents a well organized, visually attractive display using the most basic HTML tags. One of the things you might be wondering about is the spinning "Welcome" at the top of her page. It's an "animated" image (.gif) file which I'll discuss in a later topic.

Otherwise, her page is bracketed with the <CENTER></CENTER> tag (the one all the purists hate so much, but I confess to using it occasionally). She proceeds to group her links, actually this page is only the A - L entries, by category. She uses the unordered list to provide one link per line. You'll learn to identify this construct by observing the bullets in front of each entry.

You'll also notice that she has a very nice horizontal rule. She uses an <IMG> tag instead of using the <HR> tag.

Lady Hawk depends on the category to guide the surfer to sites that contain material related to her titles. A very efficient way to present a vast amount of information in a little space.

Another approach is taken by Larry Gilbert in his Web Voyeur site. His links are categorized like Lady Hawks which helps the view to make selections. But then each individual link is made up of several pieces. He might have one link that brings up another page that describes the camera location, view or purpose. He has a second link that brings up the actual images. At times he'll also include some descriptive text with the icons and titles to give just a little more information.

He organizes all of this using a definition list, <DL></DL> tag, which I'll cover in the "Adding Lists" chapter. Basically this provides a very pleasing appearance with appropriate indentation and white space. He presents a wealth of information without intimidating the reader.

My links page represents another extreme. I have some broad categories but I also present a sentence or two on each site. This is my mini-review or sales pitch to encourage you to visit the site. But I want you to have some idea of why it's on my list.

Pick the format you prefer and get your list out there for others to use!

Checking Links

There are enough error messages on the Internet with all the busy servers without you creating a whole new set of your own. Be a good netizen and make sure your links work!

There are two classes of errors: the target of your link has moved, gone out of business or something else or you simply put the wrong address down to begin with or left off a closing " or >.

The most obvious thing you can do is to bring up your page and try all your links! Seems obvious doesn't it? You'd be surprised how many times I've come across obvious typo's that just don't work. Very aggravating to the surfer, especially when it's a site they really want to visit.

Once you've done the initial testing and you know all your links are good then you face the task of checking them every so often. First, you'll find out if the page at the end of your link is still there. But even more importantly, you'll make sure that the page author hasn't totally revised the page. You might discover that what you had listed as a "Doll Collector" was now collecting pornography instead!

This does take some time, especially if you've got a lot of links. But you should do it regularly to keep your visitors happy.

I found a shortcut using Netscape Navigator 3.0. Netscape added a feature to their bookmark functions that does a check of all your bookmarks. It goes out and compares the page's date to the date you last looked at it and tags it if it's changed since you last looked at it. It also tells you if it can't reach a link. Now this means that you'd need to have all your "favorite" links in your bookmark file. Everybody does that right? But it is a nice feature.

The Rusk Family . . . "the Legend Continues"