12thstreetonline's Weblog

ADDING LINKS:

Links allow you to make one part of your text linkable to another site. If you mention a song, for example, you might want to link to it. In my last post one of the links took you to a Youtube video of Nirvana singing their excellent rendition of the controversial, Rape Me. First, I went to the link destination and copied the URL (www.etc/etc.com). Then, I came back to the text I wanted to link to the video, and highlighted it, as you can see on the right.

The next step is clicking on the image of the link, above the text box. Click on the one on the left. Then paste the URL into the “link URL” box, and press “Insert. Your text will now be highlighted.

To Link in Comments or the Title of Your Piece:

For this you need to know a little bit about HTML code. If this is your first lesson, don’t worry, it’s easy. Let’s say I want to link to a youtube video of Sarah Palin scolding supporters in a comment, the comments box doesn’t give you the chance to “add a link.”

So do this:

There are three parts to any link. There’s the computer code telling the computer “I’m going to put a link in here.” There’s the URL itself (“www .example.com/video,” or something like that). And there’s the final part which tells the computer “Right, I’ve finished this whole linking business.”

1) “I’m going to write a link:”
<a href=
“<a” means “I’m doing something special.”
“href=” means “what I’m about to write is a link” (href is an abbreviation for Hypertext REFerence).
Remember to put a space between the “a” and the “href”.

2) “This is the URL of that link:”
“www.youtube.com/example123”>
You put the URL inside speech marks to tell the computer “BETWEEN THESE SPEECH MARKS LIES THE URL”
“>”  means “Alright, I’m ready to put in the word that I want linked.”

3) “Here’s my link, and then I’m done:”
Sarah Palin</a>
So Sarah Palin will be the linked words, and
“</a>”  means “I’m done with this whole linking business.”

The full link will look like this:

Hi, did you see this <a href=”www.youtube.com/sarahisstupid”>Sarah Palin</a> video?

It’s that simple. Try it in your next comment. And remember to comment. It’s good karma.

ADDING IMAGES:

To enter a picture, above the text space that you’re typing in you should see the above photo.

The one on the left is to insert a photo, then movie, music, media, and poll. Haven’t used the last two yet, but the first three are fairly obvious. Media I think embeds anything, like word docs and other stuff, and we don’t use the “poll” button. Not yet, anyway.

It’s better to give each photo a title, as I think this is used as “alternate text.” For example, if the photo is taking ages to load, or if a blind person is using audio, this is what they’ll see/hear. When you hover the cursor over the image, the title appears.

The caption is…well, a caption, just below the photo.

Alignment can be whatever you chose, but I suggest having the first photo aligned right, and then following photos alternating between right and left. It’s your choice.

The “Link URL” is where you write the address of whatever website you want it to link to. The default is just having it link to the photo itself on a separate page. Use links wisely

Once the photo is in the body of the text you can click on it to make changes. A little box should appear on the left. Click on it:

Now you have the option to resize it and other stuff. The problem is that the box you are making the edits in is not the same size as how it appears on the blog. So always save your post, then “view post” to make sure it’s looking good.

If you have any questions about this, comment below.