Creating Links

chad's picture
Published on January 24, 2008

Links connect one web page to another web page, PDF and MS Word documents, or any other type of document. You may link to pages on other web sites or pages closer to home, on your own site.

Creating links is a two step process, first you must copy the URL, or address, to the what you're linking to, then you insert the link into your page.

Anatomy of a Web Address (URL)

Let's breakdown the parts of an example URL:

http://www.yourwebsite.com/catalog/widgets

The three components of this URL are the

  • protocol - http://
  • domain - www.yourwebsite.com
  • file path - /catalog/widget

To link to pages on other web sites, you must copy the entire URL, including the protocol, the domain, and the file path. To link to pages on your web site, copy only the file path.

Link to a Page on Your Site

  1. Navigate to the page you'd like to link to, the target page.
  2. In the address bar, near the top of the window, select and copy the file path portion of the URL, be sure to include the the slash (/) that separates the file path from the domain.
  3. Navigate to the page where you'd like to add the link.
  4. Click the Edit tab.
  5. Select a word or phrase in the body text for the page that you'd like visitors to be able to click on to visit the target page.
  6. Click the Link button in the text editor tool bar (three chain links).
  7. In the window that appears:
    1. Paste the file path you copied into the Link URL field.
    2. Enter a title which will appear when the user holds their mouse cursor over the link. The title provides more information on where the link leads.
    3. Click Insert.
  8. Click the Submit button at the bottom of the Edit form to save changes.

The text you selected should now be a different color, and it might be underlined. If you click it, it should take you to your selected target page or document.