Creating Links in Your Page

Web pages survive by placing links to other pages somewhere on themselves. There is really no way to provide all the information you want to provide on one single web page. If you think about it, how many web sites do you know that do not have any links on them?

Links have certain properties that must always be fulfilled. First, a link must be linked to something. If you want to send someone someplace, make sure that place is still up and running and make sure that what you put as the link is in fact the correct address. People who use your page do not want to be sent to aol.com if they think they were going to netscape.com. Second, a link must be tied to either text or an image. There needs to be someplace a visitor to your page can click to go to this other place.

You can insert a link in Composer in a number of ways. We will describe 3 ways to create these links below.

Using Text as a Link

If you have already decided that you want to create a link somewhere in your text, highlight that text and click the link shortcut on the toolbar, as shown here:
Highlighting text and clicking on the link shortcut will show you the following image:
To set the target of your link, type the desired URL in the box that says "Link to a page location or local file:"  ***See our note on what a URL is***

To create a Hyperlink prior to selecting text or without any text written previously you will simply place your cursor in the spot you want the link to be and hit the same link shortcut that we mentioned above.
The next step in this case is to enter some text in the "Enter text" text box. Whatever you type in this box will become the active link shown on your web page.  Now you need to place the URL of the site you want to link to in the "Link to a page location" text box. This needs to be carefully done to ensure a proper link.

Using an Image as a Link

You may choose to create a link using an image. You will notice at the top of this screen, in our links frame, we have links to a number of different sites using images instead of text. We also use the image of an arrow at the bottom of each screen to send you to the next step in the tutorial. To use an image rather than text to create a link in your page, follow the steps below.
Click on "Insert"  "Image" to see the dialog box shown at right. In order to choose the image you want to show on your web page click on "Choose File" and find the desired image on your computer. In this example we have chosen the file "apple.gif" to place on our page.
By clicking on the "Link" tab at the top of the dialog box you will see the image shown at right. To link this image to a web site you will need to type a URL into the box that says "Link to a page location..." Click on "Apply" and the image will appear on your page.
To change any of the settings of this picture or it's link click on "Format"  "Image Properties" to get the IMage Properties tool box to pop up.

***A URL is a Universal Resource Locator. This is the address that the Internet uses to locate web pages. The URL for most web pages starts with http://.***