Hyperlinks & Anchors

These 3 buttons are, from left to right:

• Insert a hyperlink
• Break or remove a hyperlink
• Insert an anchor

Inserting Hyperlinks

A hyperlink is a word, phrase or image that site visitors click on to 'jump' to a new page. To insert a hyperlink, highlight the word, phrase or image and click the hyperlink button to open this window:

The Link URL

You need to type the page or website URL into the link URL field.

Internal Links

If you are linking to a page within your site, the URL is the same as you set when you created the page but remember you must include a / in front of the URL.

E.g. to link to the page about_us, you would type in /about_us

External Links

If you are linking to an external page, you need to type in the full URL as it appears in the address bar on your browser.

E.g. http://www.ovatadesign.co.uk

However, if you put in www.ovatadesign.co.uk, the system will realise you have not included http:// and you will see this message:

Simply click ok and the system will automatically make the correction.

Setting the target

The target has two options:

• Open link in the same window - recommended for internal links
• Open link in a new window - recommended for external links

If you do not set the target the linked page will open in the same window.

Link Titles

Although link titles are not commonly used, they do serve an important role in the right circumstances. The goal of the link title is to help users predict what will happen if they follow a link. Appropriate information to include in a link title can be:

• name of the site the link will lead to
• name of the page the link will lead to
• details about the kind of information to be found on the destination page

Link titles should be as short as possible but remember auditory browsers will read the text aloud to your visually impaired visitors, so make it sensible and plain English.

Do not add link titles to all links, if it is obvious from the link and its surrounding text where the link will lead, then a title will not be of any benefit to your viewers, or even worse, it could simply be annoying.

Users should not have to point to a link to understand what it means. The link title should be reserved for supplementary information. Also, some users will have browsers that do not display link titles.

Top tip: Don't go mad with titles! If you're in any doubt, leave them alone!

Editing and Removing Hyperlinks

Highlighting an existing link and clicking the Hyperlink button will open the same window as before with your previous entries in the fields. Over type the text to make changes.

Highlighting an existing link and clicking the Unlink button will remove the link.

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Anchors

An Anchor is a word, phrase or image that site visitors click on to 'jump' to a different section within the current page. Click on the 'Insert an anchor' link at the top of this page to see an anchor at work.

In order to create an anchor link, first we must set up the destination in the page. In our example on this page, we highlighted the heading Anchors above and clicked the anchor button.

Give the destination a name, e.g. anchor. A little anchor symbol will appear next to the destination word like this ...

Now we need to create a hyperlink from the source.

Highlight the text and insert a hyperlink as described above, this time, use the anchors drop down box and select the anchor you have just named.

So clicking on the link at the top of this page will jump you down the the anchors section. We recommend not having overly long pages, it can be a irritating to scroll all the way down, but anchors are a useful way of making long pages easier to navigate.