For all those with posting privileges on this blog, here at long last are the instructions for creating clickable links inside your blog posts.

Let's make a link to our main chapter website.

First... be sure you are in "edit HTML" mode, not "compose". Now highlight the text that you want to make into a link. For this example, let's use the "chapter website" text above. Use your mouse to highlight that text, so it looks like this:


Next, click on the link button at the top of the blog post composing screen. That's the one that looks like this:

A screen will pop up that looks like this:


In the "enter url" box, type (or paste) the full web address for the site you want to link to, in this case, our chapter website. If you copy and paste the URL, you need to erase the text that's already in the box (just hit your "delete" key) and then paste the text. The advantage of this method is that if you have pulled up the site you want to link to, and then copy its URL directly from the browser's address bar, you are less likely to make a typographical error. Again, using the example of our chapter website, once you have pasted the text, that box should look like this:


Then click OK.

Now, the text for that section of your blog post entry will look like this:


And when seen in "real life," the words "chapter website" will be an honest-to-gosh clickable link.

Here's one more nifty trick, for the adventurous. The link we have created with the above method simply takes the clicker to the requested web page, within the same browser. A favorite trick of web designers is to make links open in a NEW browser window, so that while the person reading your website might wander off into new territory, you can get them to come back to your site by leaving your site open in the original window, while they wander off into a new one. Clear as mud? Nevermind. Here's how to do it.

Edit the text of the link you just created, so that it now will read as follows. I have highlighted the text to be added:


The text happens just before the > symbol, and there are no spaces in it. Since it's a little hard to read in the image, the text is as follows: target=_blank That's an underscore after the = sign and before the word "blank."

Clear as mud? I thought so....

I will create a separate link to this tutorial, on the sidebar, so that it can easily be found even after it scrolls off the main page.