Creating Links

HTML Help

Probably the most important tag in HTML is the linking tag. Use this tag to link your page to other sites on the internet, to other pages in your site and even to other places on the same page.

The basic form of the link tag is:

<A HREF="address">Linking Text</A>

where "address" is the URL or document name that is being linked to and "Linking Text" is the text that will be the actual link; i.e. the text that will appear in blue and be underlined.

Internet Links

For example, the tag:

<A HREF="http://www.amphi.com">Amphitheater School District</A>

will produce the following link:

Amphitheater School District

Please be very careful when typing this tag. If you omit a quotation mark, it will cause your whole page to display incorrectly.

Site Links

If you are connecting to another page in your site, then you don't need to type out the whole address; you simply need to type the correct pathname and filename of the linking document.

For example, to connect to the first page in this series, the Required Tags page, you would simply use the tag:

<A HREF="required.html">Required Tags</A>

which will produce the link:

Required Tags.

Another example, to connect back to the front page of this site, since the page that you are viewing is in a subdirectory, you would use the tag:

<A HREF="../index.html">Amphi HTML Page</A>

which would produce the link:

Amphi HTML Page.

The ../ tells the browser to go up one directory and look for the named file.

Links to Other Places on the Same Page

You can also link your page to other places in the same page. The most common use of this is a link that take people back up to the top of the page. To do this you need to insert an anchor tag in the place you want people to be sent TO, (for example to top of the page) using the tag:

where destination is the name of the place you want people to go. Then the link to send them there is put in the place you want people to be sent FROM, (for example the bottome of the page) using the tag:

<A HREF="#destination">Linking Text</A>

Please note that you must put the "#" character in front of your destination.

Thus, to take people back to the top of this page, I would put the tag:

at the very top of the page (right after the <BODY> tag) and then I would use the tag:

<A HREF="#top">Return to Top</A>

which would have the following result (try it!);

Return to Top

You can put a named anchor anywhere and link to it from anywhere, even other pages.

Email Links

You can also create an email link, that when clicked opens an email addressed to the person named in the link. An example of this is:

<A HREF="mailto:cyetman@amphi.com">Email Chris Yetman</A>

would produce the link:

Email Chris Yetman

Email links are a great way to allow the readers of your web page to contact you. You should probably use them at the bottom of each of your pages, as I have done below.

This site created and maintained by Christopher Yetman for the Amphitheater School District and is intended for the use of the employees and students of the Amphitheater School District. © 1999 by the Amphitheater School District.