In previous post, I explained about how to write an article. In this post, I will explain about how to include link into your post/article.

About Link

A link (hyperlink) in World Wide Web is part of a document that refers to other document or other part within the same document that the reader can follow directly. A link has a source, which is current document, and a target, that can be within current document or other document. The source of the link is usually presented in a manner that can be easily recognized, such as with different color, underline, etc. Reader can follow the link by using action (usually mouse click) on its source. After performed the action, the reader is then presented the target of the link.

Base on how the target of the link is presented, it can be categorized into two types:

• Link that presents the target in the same window or tab.
• Link that presents the target in a new window or tab.

There is no specific role on how the link should be created, but the link that open the target in new window is usually used if the target of the link is in different domain from the source, or if the source and target have some relations and opening the target in the same window will make it difficult for the reader to see them.

Link can also be distinguished base on where the target is. By using this method, link can be:

• Internal link, sometime called page jump. This is a link where the target is within the same document. This type of link is usually used when the article is too long, or to make it easier to jump into different part of the document.
• External link, where the target of the link is outside of current document.

Including link in your post

To include link into an article that you created on ICC’s website is very simple. Here are the steps to do it:

1. Mark the words that you want to be the text that represents the source of the link.
2. Click the Insert/edit link button on toolbar. You will see the Insert/edit link box.
3. From the box, at least you need to type the target of the link inside the Link URL box. If the target of the link is in different domain, you will need to type a complete URL (i.e. http://www.differentdomain.com/different_document.html). If the target is within the same domain, you can just write the target as path from root of your domain (i.e. if a complete URL of your document is http://www.mydomain.com/document.html, you can just type /document.html). If the target is within the same document, you need at least write the anchor of the target (i.e. if the target is http://www.mydomain.com/document.html#myanchor, you can just type #myanchor). How to create a named anchor will be explained below.

Creating a link in your post

The insert/edit link-box

With three steps above, you already created the link.

Note: The ICC’s website can automatically distinguish link that has target in different domain. For this type of link, the website will automatically open the target in new window.

If you want your link to be more specific, you can set more settings from the Insert/edit link box:

• Target. Determine if the target of the link will be opened in the same or different window.
• Title. Specify the text that will be displayed when the mouse pointer is positioned above the link.
• Class. If you want to display the link differently, you can select the class from the list of the class available in this setting.

Creating named anchor

If you want to create a link that targets different part of the same document, you will need to create a named anchor at the target of the document. You will use this anchor name to make a link, and typed it inside the Link URL on the Insert/edit link box as explained before.

To create a named anchor, you need to switch the editor from Visual mode into HTML mode. Click the HTML tab to switch into HTML mode.

Tab to select between visual and HTML mode

Once in HTML mode, find part of the article that will be the target of the link. After you find it, position your mouse pointer directly in front of the text, then type <a name=”myanchor”></a>, where myanchor is the name that you use to name the target.

Named anchor displayed in HTML mode