"Blue" links in posts...

Could someone please explain to me how to post a link in a thread. (I usually just copy and paste an “http://” address from one window on my computer into my post in another window where I’m reading the SD. And the way I’m doing it is not the way everyone else does it - - and I don’t know how to do it the “blue link” way!!

When posting…I see the little “click on” options for “insert hyperlink”, “wrap code tags” and “wrap PHP tags” but I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THOSE THINGS ARE. :slight_smile: So please, if you could walk me through it slowly and explain how in the simplest terms, I’d really appreciate it.

I want to learn how to post a link to an existing thread and, if I want to, rename the “blue link” to whatever. For example, I’ve seen posts that say:

“You can see so-and-so’s discuss this in this threadorthis.”

(But those are not links, I just used the “color” option.) I want to know how they do that!!! :slight_smile:

Thanks for your time and help!

Click on the first one, “Insert Hyperlink.” You’re then prompted to enter the text you want to appear as the link. Click OK, and you can enter the link itself.This… is CNN

Here’s how you would do it “by hand” (remove spaces around brackets):

[ url=“http://www.straightdope.com” ] The Straight Dope [ /url ]

becomes

The Straight Dope

Personally, I dislike it when people just post, “go here for so-and-so,” with absolutely no explanation of what the link is. There was a Pit thread about it somewhere. Remember that when choosing text for the link.

Also,


This is an example of the "code" tags.

This is an example of the "PHP" tags.

Okay so…I’ll give this a try…

[http://www.cnn.com](CNN site)

[http://i.cnn.net/cnn/.element/img/1.1/ceiling/top.right.corner.gif](CNN site too)

Dammit. That didn’t work. Okay, here’s what I did…I opened up a window on my computer and went to the CNN site. Then I came back to my window with the “post” page open…and copied what was in the window at the top of the CNN site (http://www.cnn.com) and then clicked the first button…hit okay and then typed “CNN site” and okay again. And got the post above.

???

So, first try, I’m not getting it. Please try again!!

I’m not sure I get the “codes” info, but I’m going to try and do the by hand thing now in this post for CNN again…okay…

CNN site again

…fingers are crossed…hitting submit reply…

You’ve got it now. You had it backwards the first time. When you click the button, the first thing you input is the text you want displayed (e.g., CNN); the second thing is the URL itself (e.g., www.cnn.com).

Okay, so I see I got the “naming” of the link (your choice) right the second time (did it backward the first time) but now the second time it’s not blue? I “did it by hand” though - - and didn’t “click the first button”.

I’m not hopeless - trust me - if you were here in person I’d get it a lot quicker!!! I’ll get it…I just need a little more help!

THANK YOU ALL (3!)!!

Once you’ve visited a link, it’s no longer blue. So when you put in www.cnn.com (cutting and pasting from that page), it shows up as gray because you already visited it.

Incidentally, you can change the color of unvisited and visited links. In Internet Explorer, click Tools, then Internet Options. At the bottom is a Colors button; click it.

Wow dan, it would seem you really ARE the man!! :smiley: Thanks!!

Okay - - one last thing…how about putting a link to different thread in a post? How do you do THAT?

:smiley: Yogini

The same way you do any link, really. Open the thread. Copy the url from the address bar. Go to the thread to which you want to post the link, click reply to topic, and either just paste the url or click the link button to hyperlink your text.

Ahhh… :smack: …makes sense! You’ve been a BIG help!!

Thanks again!!! :smiley:

My pleasure. :slight_smile:

In addition to what dantheman has said (Thanks too!) you might want to place a link in a post to bring up a thread at a particular post in that thread (e.g. place a link to bring up post #123). This helps posters by pointing them directly to the post to which you are referring.
[ol][li]Bring up the SDMB thread and navigate to a particular post.[]Right click on the number in the upper right corner of the post and choose “Copy shortcut”.[]Then…[/ol][list=A][]To bring up a window with only that one post, place that URL in your post as dantheman indicated.[]To bring up a window with the new thread and start at the indicated post, place the URL in your post but edit the word “showpost” to say “showthread”.[/list][/li]
NB: The OP {“Blue” links in posts…} sounded like you wanted to know how to put links to pornography into your posts (You know, “blue movies”, “blue links”) :smiley:

Driver fined for eating ice cream

Hi, I saw this thread and thought I should take the opportunity to learn how to do links too.

Yay me :slight_smile: Thanks OneYogini for the inspiration and to dantheman for the instruction :slight_smile:

Viola’s BBC link again

Heh. It worked. (Even though it’s not “blue” - - in color - - I now at least understand why!) I previewed.

Yay Viola!

And thanks CornerCase for that info…though just learning to post a thread link in another thread is a big step for today! lol! I appreciate your input…maybe I’ll need to use that “specific post” sometime too!

((((((((ALL))))))))))

:smiley:

But on preview, I apparently forgot that I wanted to LOL @ CornerCase for mentioning the “blue” connotation. Heh. :o :smiley: