How To Create Links In {your} Comments

I've noticed lately that a lot of you want to tell me about things in other places. You are hoping I, and other readers, will have a moment to go see something else, read another tidbit, or see that you yourself have written something on the subject at hand.

When I write, here, all I need to do is press a button, well actually click with my mouse, to create a hyperlink. But when I leave a comment on a blog it's important that I know how to insert the correct code. Not all blog platforms allow HTML in comments because spammers are famous for acting like humans but really being robots, but Six Apart and TypePad do, so you're safe here.

As you may have noticed, merely leaving a link will not show up as a link and oftentimes it will get cut off because it's too long horizontally to fit within the confines of the width of a comments area.

If you have a blog and you are not a tech savvy person, I would strongly suggest that you use TypePad. At TypePad they have people, actual humans, who answer the most mundane and absolutely complicated questions of mine, and tens of thousands of other bloggers, who use their platforms. What I say is this-- if you pour your heart into your blog, why not have people on the other end helping to make your space yours and unique, easy to read and easy to find?

It is because of one email exchange to Six Apart that I am able to show you, or pass on to you, how to leave links in the comments section of my blog, your blog or any blog allowing HTML in their comments area.

If you want to, let's say, point me to something funny you found skipping through the blogosphere, like this post:

http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com/2008/
02/10/62-knowing-whats-best-for-poor-people/

1. you would enter this code in before the http, <a href="
    there can be no space between <a href=" and the http

2. then after the backslash after people you would enter the code, ">
    Again, without any space between /"> you will write the actual words that help me and everyone reading to click on and pint to and acknowledge what the link is concerning.

3. The last piece of code you will jot down is </a>

So it might look like this:

<a href="http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com/
2008/02/10/62-knowing-whats-best-for-poor-
people/">O hey! This is a really funny piece about how white people view the poor.</a>

    but it will look like this to everyone reading, O hey! This is a really funny piece about how white people view the poor.

If you want to remember how to do this, just keep a little cheat sheet in your own computer. Here is an example:

<a href="http://eggbeater.typepad.com/shuna/
2007/03/vanilla_beans_p.html/">I found out how to keep vanilla beans going longer.</a>

I hope this helps.

Also, everyone, even non-food bloggers, should know about Food Blog S'cool because it's an amazing resource for those wanting to understand blogging, computers, HTML, various platforms for web and blog designing etc. Anyone can sign up, ask questions or just glean off of other people questions and comments on a massive spectrum of topics and concerns.

Comments

[Kitt]

Alas, even some Typepad blogs won't take hyperlinks, so you have to post the whole URL anyway. It's kind of a crapshoot on what formatting you can do on any given blog.

Another option is to use TinyURL, which converts long URLs to short ones. But I tend to be a little suspicious of them because I can't see exactly where that link is going to direct me.

[Athen]

It looks to me like some of your taggage was cut off, friend. Here's another way to describe makin' hrefs:

>Link text here!

[Athen]

Hmmm, my formatted tags disappeared. I guess guests don't get to play with html when commenting ... :(

[jennywenny]

I do like that website too :)

[sam]

It's funny you should memtion Food Blog S'cool, Shuna, since you were part of the inspiration for it! I guess pupil #1 wasn't paying attention in class, huh?! ;) This comment linking was the subject of Food Blog S'cool's first real post back in April 2005. Additionally, I actually embedded the code in my own blog's comment page 'welcome note' so that commenters can just cut and paste it easily into the comment if they want to make a link. Not sure if you can so that on Typepad?

[shuna fish lydon]

Kitt & Athen,

It looks like you have created links and i don't know how to undo what you have done without making it look like there should be a lot of spaces that shouldn't be there... let me know what I might be able to do on my end to help you illustrate your points.

Thank you both so much for adding in your know-how!

Jennywenny,

yes, very funny, and true!

Sam,

Yes, I am a bad student, but thanks
a. for creating the site!
b. for pointing us all to that post
c. for being you. you rock.

[Kitt]

Forgive me if I try something here. You can forgo the whole coding thing if you take a long URL that you want to post, but which risks getting cut off, by going to TinyURL.com and putting in, say:

http://eggbeater.typepad.com/shuna/2008/03/how-to-create-l.html

TinyURL will give you a much shorter link to post, in this case:

http://tinyurl.com/2rrlqw

Which will not be cut off, but which goes to the same place.

I hope that makes sense!

(I was going to explain how to hard-code link-making instructions without using spaces but that gets kind of complicated, and I fear Typepad may not like it.)

[Error]

You've transposed the slash and the quotation mark in step 2. See the spec for an authoritative and precise reference with examples.

[Someone who knows]

It's not a backslash (\); it's a forward slash (/).