Tutorial: Creating Clickable Links In Comments

As we were testing the process of leaving links in the comment section, we made the discovery that, if you simply paste the URL into the comment, it's treated as text and isn't clickable. In this tutorial, we'll show you how to make a clickable link under the Blogger platform (the one we're using now) and also how to make a signature block for your comments on the Blogger platform so people can visit you at your blog.

This is the format of the link:

<a href="URL of your post">LINK</a>

When you want to add your link in a comment to one of the daily letter posts, do this:

1. Copy the line above. You might want to put it in a Notepad file, because you're going to use it frequently during the Challenge.
2. Paste the line into a new comment.
3. Copy the address (the URL) from the address bar for your latest post. Be sure to open it in a new tab or window; you don't want to lose the line of code you pasted in the comment.
4. Delete the words URL of your post from the line you pasted into the comment. Then, paste the URL of your post between the quotes.
5. Optional but highly recommended: Change the word LINK to the title of your post or some other text letting us know what it is.
6. Post the comment by clicking the Publish button.

If you've done everything correctly, your link should look similar to this:

<a href="https://thesoundofonehandtyping.wordpress.com/2016/04/01/atozchallenge-advertainment/">Advertainment</a>

And your comment should look like this:

Advertainment

Go ahead and click on it; it'll take you to my first A to Z Challenge post from last year.

Many users, particularly Blogger ones, add a "signature" with their name and a link to their blog at the end of the post. Here's what mine looks like:

----------
John Holton
The Sound Of One Hand Typing

Here is the code to do that:

----------<br />
*your name*<br />
<a href="*your blog's URL*">*your blog's name*</a>


I'll have a video that demonstrates all of this shortly. Stay tuned!

Feel free to practice below using these templates for the link to your post and your signature. If you have any questions, leave them in the comments.

#atozchallenge: Don't Get Lost in the Shuffle, Link Tips

It's not uncommon for people to post links on their blogs, but it can be troublesome when it directs someone away from your own blog and takes them elsewhere.  Sometimes they end up clicking through a few links and losing track of where they started.  Sometimes they just forget that they started elsewhere.

To keep this from happening, I wanted to pass along a little html secret I learned, which will allow you to post a link that will automatically open a new window, keeping your own blog open instead of replacing it.

In order to post the coding and keep it visible, I will replace the carrots < > with parentheses ( ).  When you do this coding on your blog, be sure to replace any parentheses with carrots.

The following is what it looks like when you create a typical link:

(a href="http://www.thewarriormuse.com/")(/a)

You enter the name for where you want the link to lead, like so:

(a href="http://www.thewarriormuse.com/")The Warrior Muse(/a)

In order to change this coding so that you will not replace your blog page with another page, instead opening the link in a new window, you need to enter the following after the quotes that enclose the URL:

target="_blank"

Your new code will look like this:

(a href="http://www.thewarriormuse.com/"target="_blank")The Warrior Muse(/a)

Don't forget to replace those parentheses with carrots (or whatever the heck those symbols are called.)

You won't get lost in the linky shuffle again if you use this little tip!

May you find your Muse.

Shannon