Thomas Wallace: Lectures and Resources - A collection of website design lectures and resources

Creating Links to Other Pages

The process of creating links to other pages in your site or external web pages is relatively strait forward. The instructions below cover the four primary types of links you will find on a web page.

External Links

1. With Dreamweaver and the page you wish to link from open, highlight the text you wish to make into a link
2. In the Properties Inspector, type or paste the address of the web page you wish to link to in the link input box
   For all external links the format for the link should be:
   http://www.website.com/page.html

3. If you would like the web page you link to to open in a new browser window, set the Target Field to _blank.
   Usability Note: I do not reccomend opening new browser windows unless the user knows this will occur. Use with extreme caution!
   

Internal Links: Other Pages in Your Site

1. With Dreamweaver and the page you wish to link from open, highlight the text you wish to make into a link
2. In the Properties Inspector, click the folder icon next to the link dialog box to browse to the file you wish to link. Make sure the page you link to is within your Personal Web site folder or the link will break when you upload the site!

Internal Links: Places on the Web Page

Linking is not limited to other pages on the web or in you site. You can also link to other locations in a web page. This is very useful for navigating long pages with a lot of content. There are two things you will need in order for this to work, the anchor and the link. The anchor is a location on a page that you have named. To insert an anchor:

1. In the document you wish to add an anchor to, place your cursor where you would like the anchor to be placed.
2. Set the Insert Bar menu to common and press the third button (looks like an anchor) to insert the anchor.

3. Select an name for the Anchor (lowercase, no spaces)
4. To link to the Anchor, highlight the text you wish to be a link to the Anchor and in the Link input in the Properties Inspector insert a # followed by the Anchor name. (#anchorname)

Link to send Email

1. In the document you wish to add an email link to, place your cursor where you would like the link to be placed.
2. Set the Insert Bar menu to common and press the second button (looks like an envelope) to insert the email link.
3. In the Text field enter the text you would like to display as the email link. In the E-mail field enter the email address.

Note: Create an email link manually by highlighting the text you wish to link and in the link bar type mailto:email@email.com