Embedded Link

Greg to the rescue!!!! You saved me once before =) I had a little cheat sheet taped to my old monitor for when I came to BPL to make a post. This site is the only one that I use html. My old monitor disappeared along with my cheat sheet. I googles html and tried to follow their instructions and failed somewhere. I’ll use your instructions and give it a whirl. Here we go!!!!

BudLyte Super Stove

Greg, you did it again, your are one heck of a nice guy to bail me out again. Thank You!!!

Now I can go and correct my errors =)

Dan

Dan –

'The system might be limiting the amount of tried edits per person or time period, not sure why.'

Nope. Unlimited edits, AFAIK.

Golite Footwear

Redgum

Arapiles, you have to enclose the link with an ", just before the first >, then close the statement with a after "Redgum".

Thanks Miguel – but whenever I post it chops off the "<" etc after Redgum …. not sure why.

Edit … got it right, finally.

Sorry, I forgot that you can't show hyperlink code on a webpage…it just disappears. Take a look at the OP hyperlink code again:

See the "BPL" text? After it you have to put in the symbols you see after "BPL" in the image above. Also, Just before "Redgum" and ">" you don't have an apostrophe to close the statement. Without the apostrophe the link that you wrote cannot be read.

Edit. Great! Happy Linking!

TG

ACCU

Ellipse

bueno

Test

Cool Tarp

Testing

Newton

From time to time, someone asks how to put a hyperlink in a posting. I am no HTML guy, but thought I would share a couple of things I have learned about about posting at BPL. (Suggestions for improving this post are welcome.)

Example of the source for a hyperlink:

<a href=”http://www.backpackinglight.com”>BPL</a&gt;

The same hyperlink, live: BPL

To create your own hyperlink, just:

• replace “http://www.backpackinglight.com&#8221; with your own URL (the quotation marks are required)
• replace “BPL” with whatever text string you want to appear in your posting
• include the result in your posting

The BPL posting mechanism does not handle an “@” sign in URLs, such as Flickr URLs. You can get around that by replacing the “@” with “%40”. (Thanks, Kerry Rodgers.)

=========================================================

Handling long URLs — use tinyurl

You cannot (successfully) handle very long URLs this way (a BPL software limitation?). The solution is to use http://tinyurl.com/ to create a shorter, but equivalent, URL.

1. Go to http://tinyurl.com/
2. Enter the long (i.e. real) URL and click the button
3. Choose one of the two choices it gives you (direct, or preview). Use that URL in place of the original (long) URL.

I wish I could quantify how long is too long, but I can’t. If anyone knows, please chime in and I’ll modify this post to reflect that.

=========================================================

Referring to a specific post in a thread

The easiest way to get the URL for a specific post is to click on a link that takes you directly to that post. The URL the browser shows will then be the correct one.

Otherwise, you need to construct the correct URL. To do that, you need two things:
1) The ID of the specific post
2) The URL of the thread that post is in

Getting a specific post’s ID
The ID of a specific post appears to be an overall sequence number for postings. Adjacent postings in the same thread will not necessarily have adjacent, or even close, IDs. The best way to find the ID of the specific post is to get it from the page’s HTML:

1. Look at the page’s HTML source, such as by using one of the following ways:
   • Choose View Page Source from the right-mouse menu
   • Select from just before the post to within the post, and then choose View Selection Source from the right-mouse menu
2. In the source, find the post you want to refer to, such as by searching for some of its text
3. Look back (up) at the post’s heading for a line like </table><a name=”97772″></a>
4. The digits after name= are the post’s ID, in this case 97772

Forming the specific post’s URL
Look at the URL from the browser. The part after “forum_thread_id=” is the interesting part. Depending on how you got to the page, it will look something like one of the following:

• forum_thread_id=13314&startat=20
• forum_thread_id=13314&disable_pagination=1
• forum_thread_id=13314&skip_to_post=264865#264865

The first number after “forum_thread_id=”, 13314 in this case, is the thread ID.
To create the specific post’s URL:

• take the URL from the browser
• replace everything from the “&” after the thread ID with “&skip_to_post=97772#97772”, where “97772” is the ID of the specific post

In this example, that would be:

<first part of the URL>forum_thread_id=13314&skip_to_post=97772#97772

As an example, the link to Kerry Rodgers’ post earlier in this post was done that way — his post’s URL is http://www.backpackinglight.com/cgi-bin/backpackinglight/forums/thread_display.html?forum_thread_id=13314&skip_to_post=204575#204575.

Always test your URL after posting it

Enjoy!

nm

Sorry Greg — my bad — I knew it was in "test", but forgot it is in your thread.

(Later) It was work-in-progress. I have now completed it. My intent is to:
1) show the URL example without needing an image
2) show how to construct a URL for a specific post
3) mention the need to use tinyurl at times

— Bob

Great.
No apologies needed. This is not "My" thread. It's a Link resource thread.

I'll check back later.

Greg

I have often thought that the facts about putting a hyperlink in a posting should be collected in a single place. I have fixed my earlier posting to do that.

The posting now includes:
*) Making a basic hyperlink (redundant with several other postings)
*) Using tinyurl so that long URLs will work
*) How to reference a specific posting in a thread (such as I just did at the start of this posting)

The last of those is something I have not seen documented in another posting. It often requires looking at the source HTML. I hope that is not too off-putting. I hope that my directions are clear.

If anyone has suggestions for improving the posting — corrections, pointing out something confusing or unclear, a way to make any of the information more accessible, other information that should be included there, etc please let me know.

Thanks,
Bob

Link

click on make your own zipper in the menu on the left

Charlie, indeed

Add the target="_blank" attribute to your main post.

"Add the target="_blank" attribute to your main post."

Sir, yes, sir! ;)

My Site

No, no, no. You need to "Add the target="_blank" attribute to your main post."