How to create links, and other reader questions

Seattle PI reporter Cecilia Goodnow posted this question on yesterday's marketing your blog post:

I've got two questions:
-- How do you create a link to another site?
-- If you have a long blog post, how do you format it so the page displays only a brief introduction, with a link to "Read full post?" I found instructions on blogger.com but they were confusing. You have to insert a bunch of html into your template,and I wasn't tracking where the code should go. Is there an easier way?

Thanks for the questions Cecilia. As luck would have it, one of them's super easy, the other one's kind of hard. I'll start with the easy one.

If you're blogging in Blogger, adding a link is easy as pie. Say you want to link the phrase above "yesterday's marketing your blog post." Here's your steps:

1. Sign into blogger. Go to the Dashboard. Hit create new post.
2. Type in some text. Now highlight the phrase you want to link
3. See that row of icons in the upper left of your screen? There's a b, an i, then something that looks kind of like a chain link (with a green blob behind it. I guess that's supposed to be a globe?). Click the Chain Link thingy.
4. A new little box will pop up. Type or paste the entire link in there and click Okay.

That's it. Easy, right?

Okay, for the hard one, read on after the jump.


Thanks for asking me this question Cecilia. I've been wondering for a long time how to create expandable posts but have been too lazy to look it up. Finally I looked it up tonite and found an easy-to-follow set of instructions here. Difficulty on this is medium.

Bottom line is there's no easy way that I know of to do this. It involves a bit of cutting and pasting of code. If you're not comfortable doing that I'd wait until you have had a bit more experience.

Please let me know if I can answer any more questions for you! And hey, everybody else -- how's this site working out for you? Is it answering questions you need answered? Am I going to fast or too slow? Lemme know!