Basic Web Page Writing Step 15 - Links to Different Internet Sites

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Basic Web Page Writing Step 15
Links to Different Internet Sites

In step 14 you saw how to create links to jump to a section of your page and return back. Many times you will find it important to send a person to another site on the internet and off your pages completely for information or files you feel may be important to them.

This step will show you how to insert a URL address to hyperlink to another document anywhere on the World Wide Web.

What are URLs

The World Wide Web uses Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) to specify the location of files on the other servers. A URL includes the type of resource being accessed :// the address of the server / the directory of the file / the file name.

The URL is what you will need to build a hyperlink from your web page to connect to some other place on the Web. URLs are written in this format:

type :// server.domain / path or directory / sub-directory / filename

NOTE: Upper and Lower case is important in writing URLs.

The Types Of URLs

There are a number of different types of URL addresses, below are a few types.

file: a file on your local server
ftp: a file on an anonymous FTP server - FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol, archives of files
http: a file on a World Wide Web server - HTTP stands for HyperText Transfer Protocol
gopher: a file on a Gopher server - menu driven directories of files and information
WAIS: a file on a WAIS server - WAIS stands for Wide Area Indexed Server
news: a Usenet newsgroup - Collection of new groups arranged by topic.
telnet: a connection to a Telnet-based server - Log on remotely to another computer and launch an external program

Obtaining URLs

Since most URLs are long and must be written exactly, there are several ways to obtain URLs.

On your Browser you will see a location window. Using your mouse you can highlight the URL and copy it, and then paste into your page.
Get a pencil and paper and copy the URL down exactly to be typed into your page at a later time.
Save the Page you want to use as a link as a bookmark in your browser, then when you are ready to use the address it will be handy.

Writing A Hyperlink To A URL

To create a hyperlink to a Document on a different server you would need to first obtain the URL address.

If your were going to write a link to the introduction page of this guide, you would need the following information first:

http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/1260/intro.htm

Lets see what each part of the above is for:

http://: The type of URL
www.geocities.com: This is the server's domain address - For geocities.com on the World Wide Web
CapeCanaveral: A directory on the server at geocities.com
1260: My sub-directory under the capecanaveral directory at geocities.com
intro.htm: The name of the introduction htm file

The Hyperlink then to jump to the introduction page of this guide would be:

<A HREF="http://www.geocities.com/capecanaveral/1260/intro.htm">Go To Guide Introduction Page</A>

Remember we have to include the text we want to display as the hyperlink text and enclose the address with the " symbol.

NOTE: Once you click on a hyperlink to another system, the only way to get back is to use the back option from your browser.

The above link would appears as:

Go To Guide Introduction

Look at another link below:

If your were going to go to the Yahoo Home page using a hyperlink, it would look a bit different since you are connecting directly to the Yahoo Server which is at the main level, therefore you would end the line with a / since you are not indicating any directory or path.

The address for Yahoo is - www.yahoo.com

So the URL would be:

<A HREF="http://www.yahoo.com/">Go To Yahoo</A>

And it would appear as:

Go To Yahoo -- (Note, if you click this you will go to the Yahoo Home Page)

Now let's look at a FTP site.
The site for CuteFTP is: ftp://papa.indstate.edu/

So the hyperlink URL would look like:

<A HREF="ftp://papa.indstate.edu/">Go To CuteFTP File Area</A>

It would appear as:

Go To CuteFTP File Area

This is the fun part of creating your web page. You will find may pages on the WWW that you will want to tell others about and creating a Hyperlink from your page is the easiest way to get them there.

Try creating hyperlinks to different sites on the Web. Once you get the hang of it, you will be looking for sites to tell others about.

In step 16 you will learn how to create a different hyperlink, a HyperGraphic Links.

STEP 16 -- HyperGraphic Links

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created by Larry Curreri,

last modified: January 14, 2002

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Basic Guide For Writing Web Pages -- Introduction / Table Of Contents / Previous Page / Next Page