Okay, let’s say you find a link you want to include in a comment on “Alas” (or on most other blogs, for that matter). The link can be any website address, but for this example I’ll use www.example.com. Like this: Go visit this site.

So what do you type to produce Go visit this site.?

Here’s what you do.

1. In the "entry body" box on the blog software screen - that’s the box where you’ve been typing in your blog entries - type Go visit . (I’m using the color red just to make these directions easier to read; the red doesn’t mean anything.)
2. Then, still in the "entry body" box, type <a href="
   So at this point, the sentence you’ve typed into the "entry body" box looks like this:

   Go visit <a href="

3. Go copy the complete web address, just the way you would if you were going to cut and paste it.
4. Paste the complete web address into the sentence you’ve been typing. The sentence should now look like this:

   Go visit <a href="http://www.example.com

5. Type "> - that’s a quote mark and a > - immediately after the web address you just pasted. The sentence should now look like this:

   Go visit <a href="http://www.example.com">

6. Now type the text you want readers to click on to follow the link. In this case, that means you type this site. The sentence now looks like this:

   Go visit <a href="http://www.example.com">this site.

7. Now all you have to do is tell the computer that you’re finished typing the link. You do that by typing </a> . So the completed sentence looks like this:

   Go visit <a href="http://www.example.com">this site.</a>

But to blog readers, it will look like this:

Go visit this site.

Neat, isn’t it?

Common errors: I think the most common errors are:

* Forgetting or misplacing the quote marks.

* Forgetting the “http://” that goes at the start of web addresses.

* Forgetting the / that goes in the </a> at the end of your link.

If the link you made isn’t working, check to see if you’ve made any of those errors.