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Introduction

Linking is was really sets the web apart from other forms of publishing. Instead of having to follow a prescribed order, web surfers can choose which page they'd like to see next by clicking on various links.

To make your pages as dynamic as possible, you should include multiple links on each page. These links should go to other pages on your site, as well as other sites on the web.

Linking to Other Pages

In order for users to navigate through your site, you'll need to provide links from one page to the next. These instructions are for creating links to pages on your own site. If you're linking to pages that aren't yours, see the instructions below.

The first thing you'll need is some text that will eventually become your link. This can be a word, phrase, sentence, paragraph, or any other contiguous block of text.

Next, you should highlight the text that will become the link. You'll see in our examples that we've chosen to only make the words "link to other pages" a link (leaving the rest of the sentence as normal text).

Once you've highlighted some text, we need to choose where that text will link to. You need to find the Text Properties Panel at the bottom of the screen. If you don't see it (see the sample picture), then you may need to pull down the Window menu and select Properties. That should cause the panel to show on your screen.

On the panel, there's an input that says Link and a blank box after it. Just to the right of this box is a small folder icon (see picture). You should click on this folder icon.

Clicking on the folder will open a file selection dialog box. Here, you should find the file you'd like to link to (that is, when users click the link you've created, this is the file they will see next). When you've found the file in the browser, click the Choose button.

Once you've done this, the text you've highlighted should change so that it appears to be a link. Usually, this means that the color will change, and the text will become underlined. If the color doesn't change (or changes to a color you don't like), you should try changing the colors of your document.

Linking to Other Sites

In addition to linking to your own pages, you'll probably want to make links to other sites run by other people.

The procedure is the same as above, except that instead of clicking the folder icon, we type an address in the Link box.

Make and highlight text that you'd like to become a link.

In the Text Properties Panel at the bottom of the screen, find the box that says Link. (If you don't see the panel, then you may need to pull down the Window menu and select Properties).

In the Link box, type the address to the page you'd like to link to. This must be a fully-qualified address. That is, your address must start with "http://" and have a full hostname and path associated with it. If you don't put "http://" at the beginning of the link, the link won't work!

Hit the Return key, and the address of the link should be committed to the link. The text should change color and underline to show that it's a link now.