How to share cool sites with your friends

For those who have just started blogging for the first time, you're probably going to want to share cool sites with the people you know. So I decided to write up what I've learned in the past few days from my experience with blogging for the first time.

I'll begin with the basics:

1. One of the best definitions I found for the word "link" is: "Clickable word(s) or graphics on a webpage that take the viewer to another place on the same page, to another webpage, or to another whole website."

A link usually looks something like this: http://www.scientologytoday.org

2. Very often, making a link is as simple as clicking a button or image that says "insert link."

3. However, there are some places where you need to use "html" to create a link. Html is short for "hypertext markup language," or in other words, a type of language that computers use to talk to each other over the Internet.

4. To create a link to http://www.humanrights-france.org/profile/index.htm, start by typing in the following characters:

<a href="http://www.humanrights-france.org/profile/index.htm">

This is the link itself — i.e., this is what tells the computer how to get to the page you want to link to.

To break it down more, you have a couple key sections. Start with:

<a href="

Then add the name of the website: http://www.humanrights-france.org/profile/index.htm

so that it looks like this:

<a href="http://www.humanrights-france.org/profile/index.htm

Then add these characters at the end: ">

so that it looks like this:

<a href="http://www.humanrights-france.org/profile/index.htm">

Now you have made the link — but you're not done yet. You still need to tell the computer what you want the link to look like on the screen.

For example, if you had a really long link like this one...
http://www.scientology-buffalo.org/en_US/community/opening/davidmiscavige.html

... you may not want all of that to show up on your page; you would probably prefer it if it looked like this:

David Miscavige Keynote Address - Buffalo Church

So now, take the link you just made (the one that looks like this):

<a href="http://www.humanrights-france.org/profile/index.htm">

and add the text you want to show up on the screen, so that it looks like this:

<a href="http://www.humanrights-france.org/profile/index.htm">Human Rights France</a>

Everything that you type between

<a href="http://www.humanrights-france.org/profile/index.htm">

and

</a>

will show up on the screen.

The end result should look like this:

Human Rights France

5. Adding links in comments on Netscape

Netscape is a website for sharing news stories with your friends. Sometimes I find a site I want to share in the comments section. To do so, it's actually very simple.

Just type in:

http://www.humanrights-france.org/profile/index.htm

and it will work.

If you put <a href=" at the beginning of your link, it will not work.

6. Adding links in Blogger comments

(Blogger is a site for making your own blog. This blog was made with Blogger.)

Sometimes, when you make a link, you can just type www.scientologytoday.org and it will work. But this does not work well in Blogger. The best thing to do is type the full link, including http:// at the beginning:

http://www.scientologytoday.org

and it should work just fine.

7. Adding links in Kaboodle

(Kaboodle is a site for sharing bookmarked pages with your friends.)

Sometimes I have wanted to add links in comments I've made on my friends' kaboodle pages. To do this, you will need to type out the full link:

<a href="http://www.humanrights-france.org/profile/index.htm">Human Rights France</a>

and it should work fine.

If there is anything you need help with, let me know by leaving a comment on my blog.

Ciao, =shaun=