Wednesday, February 4, 2009

How to Create Links in Blogger, redux

Seattle PI reporter Cecilia Goodnow writes in with great news. She asked earlier how to create a link in Blogger, and reports tonight that by jove, she's done it!

Yay! I created my first link on Cover to Cover Kids. However, it's a long, cumbersome url for one of my Post-Intelligencer stories, and since I'm writing from home, I can't access the P-I's nifty url shortener. I tried converting the url through tinyurl.com, but it created a nonfunctional link, because it apparently duplicated some of the code already formatted by blogger. Any tips on getting those links to a manageable size?


If you recall, the earlier post on creating a link gave these instructions:

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.

The key to avoiding publishing that unwieldy long link is up there in step two.

Instead of writing:

"Check out my book review at: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/books/386189_octavian04.html"

Type:

"Check out my book review HERE."


Now, hold down your cursor and drag it over the word HERE to highlight it, and go back to step three to create your link. In other words, embed the link in the word HERE. No need for the reader to ever see the ugly long link.

Let me know if that makes sense!

And Cecilia, when you're ready, post a link to your blog so we can all take a look!
Michelle

3 comments:

  1. It took some trial and error to figure out exactly what you were saying, but I did it! Phew. A few more blog posts and I'll be ready to post a link.

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  2. Hey thanks for your post. It was easy to follow your directions. 1234 was all I needed. Very helpful!

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  3. Thank you soo much!!! This makes my blog look much better (I am new to the whole blogging thing, so yeah)!

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