Links to other blogs or websites is an important feature of the web, allowing us the capacity to connect to a learning community. Unlike books, which remain static on the page, a blog can take us places, extending our learning and thinking beyond that of one source. I strongly encourage you to become adept at placing links on your blog. This is not hard to do!

Many blog systems have a simple tool to allow you to highlight the text you want to become the link and then assign the web address to that text. I encourage you to navigate to a web address, copy it, and then paste the web address to your posts. Web addresses can be easily mistyped, making them useless.

If your blogging system does not have a tool to make posting links simple, below is the html code to use in your post that will accomplish the same thing. The blue parts must appear exactly as typed, and don't forget both of those tiny little quotation marks! You would change the red parts to make them read exactly what you want them to say.

<a href="Paste_the_exact_complete_web_address_here_beginning_with_http">This is the text the reader sees in your post that serves as the actual link that is usually blue and underlined</a>

Here is an example:

"Click here to visit my site." actually looks like this in the html code: "Click <a href="http://drtimtyson.com/">here</a> to visit my site." You can do some other fancy things to the link if you want. The example below is the same link code but will do two new things to the link: 1) When the user clicks on the link the site opens in a new window. 2) If the user holds the mouse over the link without clicking on it, a little box pops up that says, "This guy is a great person!"

Now "Click here to visit my site." actually looks like this in the html code: "Click <a href="http://drtimtyson.com/" target="_blank" title="This guys is a great person!">here</a> to visit my site." The additional target tag (in bold black)opens the site in a new window. The additional title tag (in bold green) creates the little pop up when the mouse hovers over the link without clicking on it.

A common problem is the link going on the the end of your entire post--everything is the link. If that happens, you simply forgot to put the last little tag at the end of the link: </a>