How Do I Create a Link to Another Page or Web Site?

First, you need to know the web address, or URL, of the page that you want to link to. The easiest way to get this is to visit the page, select the URL from your browser's location bar, and copy (Ctrl-C, or "Copy" under the "Edit" menu) the URL.

Second, you need the HTML syntax for creating a hyperlink. It's a lot easier than it sounds. Here's an example. Suppose you want to write the sentence "here's a web site with some interesting information", and you want the words "web site" to link to the Center for American Progress's site. You would type the following:

here's a <a href="http://www.americanprogress.org/">web site</a> with some interesting information.

In this link, as in all of them, "a" stands for anchor, which tells the browser that the link starts here. "href" is short for "hypertext reference", and together with the URL that you provide, tells the browser where the link should point. And "/a" tells the browser where the link should end.

ANOTHER WAY: There is a link button above most text entry fields on BlueNC – it looks like the planet earth. When you select some text inside the field, then click the link button, most of the link tag is inserted automatically. It's still up to you to enter the destination URL, though. (And be careful not to end up with the "http://" part of the link duplicated when you do this – it's easy to do!)