So you want to post a direct link to your blog entry...

It's almost time for the Friday Five, and I think we all know that a direct link in the comment box will get us more visitors. And who doesn't want more visitors?

Here is the formula you use to post a link within a comment.

<a href="the URL of your blog post goes here">what you want the link to say goes here</a>

Here's a narrative explanation in relatively plain English.

The first pair of brackets includes the html code and the actual address to which you want people to navigate. I'm going to put the symbols in single quotes here, but you do not use the single quotes when you make the link.

You begin the operation with '<' then put in 'a href=' with no space between '<' and 'a'.

After the '=' insert the link to your blog entry; if you don't know exactly what link to use, most blog posts have the word Permalink right next to the link for comments, or the permalink may be embedded/disguised in a Timestamp (as in "posted by Songbird at 3:30 p.m."). Click on "permalink" or the time, then copy and paste the URL to which it takes you. The URL appears in the navigation box.

Put the URL in double quotes, as in "http://notreallymyaddress.com"

PLEASE NOTE: the URL you paste must include "http://" or it will not work. html is not intuitive in the way your web browser may be. It does not assume the first part of the address. (Thanks to Gallycat for explaining the error some of us have made.)

Once you have pasted the URL, close the operation with '>'

Now you write the text you want to show up as hyper-linked, or in plainer language, the words people will click on to travel to your blog.

After that word or those words, use another '<' follow that, leaving no spaces, with '/a' then '>"
This last bit of code turns off the html coding. In other words 'a' is telling the computer you want to make a link, and '/a' is telling the computer you're finished. 'href=' tells the computer what you're linking *to.*

I hope this helps. When you have achieved linkage, you may claim MadSkillz. ;-)