Linking and Permalinking

I'm helping some of my SME contacts work through some of the blogging processes. That was part of the reason for this blog, so long post about to begin about linking.

This example will be a "live" link to Juergen's blog to show how the post would look. I hope he doesn't mind if we send a little traffic his way.

There are two parts to the process. (1) Creating a hyperlink and (2) Knowing the address to hyperlink.

Here is how the sequence would work. I'm going to use one of Juergen's blog entries as an example.

On January 24th Juergen posted some thoughts to his blog. The post was at 9:02pm. Suppose that entry was a longer article. How do we find the "address" of that article?

[A] If you look at the timestamp, you'll notice it is blue, and in reality it is a hypelink. Just point to it with your mouse. Depending on your browser, the http string probably shows at the bottom of your screen. In this case, the "address" is
"http://juergenboenisch.blogspot.com/2006/01/
    i-had-interesting-discussion-about-how.html"    (single line)

In blog parlence this is called the permalink address. It is the address in Blogger's database, and will always be available. Hence "perma"-link.

[B] Now rather than retyping all that, "Right Click" on the timestamp. The options dialog/tool that pops up allows you to "Copy Link Location"
which puts the whole thing on the clipboard. (I'll assume you've used cut and paste before.) I would copy it into notepad as temporary storage, or Word, or Wordpad, because it is likely you will be arranging and copying something else before you need the address.

[C] Open a second browser window and log into Blogger.

[D] You want to create a new post, let's say in Human Side of Lean. You might cut and paste text from your longer post, or type your own summary/opinion.

[E] Crucial step. Highlight (left click and drag) the word or phrase you want to serve as the link. Now look up on the tool bar of the edit for posting dialog. There is a little globe with a infinity sign on top (it is actually two links of a chain but my resolution isn't too good). Click on the globe (with text highlighted in the body) and it brings up a dialog asking for the URL.

[F] Paste that address, the permalink, there. (Remember the dialog starts with http, and so does your address. Make sure you don't have http://http://xxxxx.) Hit OK. This wraps the html anchor code around the link.

[G] Post it. Your done !