How to make a clickable link

There are more than one way to make a clickable link (hyperlink). One way is to write a HTML tag yourself in the EDIT HTML mode. When you do this, you will have a choice of making the link open in the same window or in a new window

Making a hyperlink open in the same window

To write a hyperlink which open in the same window, the HTML tag is of the form <a href="URL of target site">Description</a> Replace Description with a description of the target site. That description is referred to as an Anchor text and is important if you are linking to other part of your own site as this Anchor text will let the search engines know what that post is all about and will make it easier for people searching for topics contained in that post. It is also what people will see in your site. For example this HTML tag <a href="http://blogger-tricks.blogspot.com">Blogger Tips and Tricks</a> will be seen as Blogger Tips and Tricks.

The "Description" is what people call the anchor text and to read about the importance of anchor text, go to Importance of anchor text in hyperlinks. In shout, don't ever put the anchor text (Description) as "here" if possible.

URL is short for Uniform Resource Locator, and is the "address" of the site you want to link to. It can be copied from the address bar at the top of the page. If you are not familiar with URL, refer to What is URL and how to get it

Making a hyperlink open in a new window

To make a link open in a new window, you will have to write the HTML in this form: <a href="URL of target site" target="_blank">Anchor Text</a> or <a href="URL of target site" target="new">Anchor Text</a>

Using the hyperlink icon to make a clickable link

If you want to make a link to another part of the web or to another post in your blog, and you don't want to mess with HTML, the easiest is to use the LINK icon in the post editor tool bar. For example, to link to Natural Remedies, first highlight the text as shown in the screenshot above, then click the LINK tool. A pop-up box will appear for you to enter the url of the target site. If you don't even want to type the url, you can go to the target site, copy from the address bar and paste into the pop-up box, then click OK. This will be best done with a browser with tabbed browsing like FireFox. Then you can be in the post editor page of Blogger in one tab and the site you want to link to in another tab, all in the same window, and you can easily go from one tab to another by clicking on the tab which will give information about what is in that tab.

The link HTML tag will automatically be written for you. The link will open in the same window, and you will not have the choice of making the link open in a new window. You also will not have what they call a tool tip which appear when you hover your mouse over the link and which will give information about the site you are linking to. Refer to the relevant section if you want that.

To make the link you made using the link icon open in a new window, change to EDIT HTML mode if you are in the compose mode, look for the HTML for the link you made, and add the target="_blank" or target="new" attribute to link HTML, for example,

<a href="http://foodasmedicine.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Natural Remedies</a> or

<a href="http://foodasmedicine.blogspot.com/" target="new">Natural Remedies</a>

Note that these ways of making links open in new windows has been deprecated but will still be supported for quite some time. There are people using Javascript to get around this, but Javascript are not allowed in Blogger post and if I have time, I will try to find out how this can be done.

Make tool tip appear for hyperlinks

Some people like to give even more information about a link beyond what is given in the anchor text, and for that, you can add a title="" attribute. Then when a visitor hover his mouse over the link, a tool tip will appear which will give whatever extra information you want to give to the visitor. For example, this link HTML

<a href="http://bloggerfordummies.blogspot.com" title="on online book (in progress) for Blogger beginners written with no assumption of any prior knowledge">Dummies Guide to Google Blogger</a>

Will display the link Dummies Guide to Google Blogger. Try hovering your mouse over the link and observe (looks like there is a limit of how much information you can put in the title attribute because in Firefox 2.0, the information I put in was truncated in the tool tip. I checked in different browsers and in Flock, it was also truncated, but in Internet Explorer 7 and Opera, the information was displayed in full. Thus if you are interested in how visitors using different browsers, it is a big advantage to have many browsers in your computer. There are lots of other advantages as well. See Why you should be using more than one browser). It does your computer no harm to have more than one browsers in your computer.

Update 9 May 2007: For linking from one part of the post to another part of the post in the SAME page, refer to How to enable your visitors to jump from one part of a page to another part in the same page.

For linking from one part of a post to another part in ANOTHER post, see How to link from a spot on a page to another spot in ANOTHER page.

Books from Amazon

The Weblog Handbook: Practical Advice on Creating and Maintaining Your Blog

Publishing a Blog with Blogger: Visual QuickProject Guide