Links are clickable spots (the "link") on a webpage that take the visitor elsewhere (the "target").

A link may take the visitor to another page on your site (an "internal link"), to a page on a different website (an "external" or "outbound link"), or to a different spot on the same page (an "anchor link"). They may also open an email message addressed to a particular email address in the visitor's default email program. (Note that we generally do not recommend this type of email link as it can be a target for spam and, depending on the email program used by the visitor, they do not always work as expected.) 

The clickable spot can be text or an image. If it's text, it is usually formatted in such a way to indicate to the user that it's clickable. Historically, this has been through an underline, but, depending on the design of your website, it may be through a different color or a hover affect (the text style changes when you point to it with the mouse). 

Regardless of the type of link or target, the process of creating a link is done basically the same way.

To create a link:

1. Select the item you want to become the link (text or a picture).
2. Click the "Link" button (two links of a chain) on the text editor toolbar.
3. Complete the necessary options in the "Link" dialog box.
4. Click "OK."
5. Save the change by clicking the "Save Content" button.

The "Link" dialog box has several options that vary based on what type of link you are creating. These are described below.

Creating an internal link

An internal link is one where the target is a different page on the same website. To create an internal link in Virteom, you need to know the URL for the target, but you don't need to include the entire URL, just the part that refers to the specific page you are pointing to. Take this page for example. Its entire URL is:

http://www.virteom.com/working-with-links 

Because we are creating an internal link, the system already knows the "http://www.virteom.com" part. We just need to start with the slash after the ".com" and use the rest. So, the target would be:

/working-with-links

Note that spelling, capitalization, and punctuation count! We generally recommend that you copy and paste the URL (from the slash on) so that it is exact. 

Once you have determined the target URL, you need to enter it in the "URL" field in the "Link" dialog box. Be sure to leave the "Link Type" field set to "URL." The "Protocol" field will automatically change to "<other>" when you enter a URL that begins with a slash. That is fine! You do not need to change anything else in the "Link" dialog box. Just click "OK" to create the link.

Creating an external link

An external link is one where the target is for a page on a different website. Usually, we recommend that external links are setup to open in a new window/tab in the browser. That way, you can provide the link but you don't completely drive traffic away from your own website and/or confuse the user. To create this type of link, you need the entire URL for the target, including the "http://www." part. For example to link to the "About Us" page on "SomeOtherSite.com," the URL might be:

http://www.someothersite.com/about-us

Note that spelling, capitalization, and punctuation count! We generally recommend that you copy and paste the URL so that it is exact. However, the dialog box will automatically place the "http://" part for you, so you only need to copy starting at "www."

Once you have determined the target URL, you need to enter it in the "URL" field in the "Link" dialog box. 

Next, if you want to set the link to open in a new window or tab, you need to access the "Target" tab in the "Link" dialog box and set the "Target" field to "New Window_(blank)." (To reset it to the original, where the target opens in the same window as the link, change the setting back to "<not set>". The other options available in this field are seldom used and are related to frames or popup windows, which are generally not recommended.

Creating an anchor link

An anchor link points to a specific spot on a webpage. Generally, anchor links are used to point to a spot on the same webpage, but they can point to a different page. A common usage of anchor links are FAQ pages, where you see a list of questions at the top and the corresponding answers running down the entire page. Each of the questions may be a link to the answer, and each answer may have a "back to top" link near it. This is accomplished using anchor links.

To create anchor links, you must:

1. Highlight the text, click the photo or video you would like to anchor to
2. Choose the 'Link' icon from the toolbar
3. In the new window that popsup, from the 'Link Type' dropdown, choose "Link to Anchor in Text"
4. In the same window, switch over to the 'Advanced Tab'
5. On the Advanced Tab in the 'ID" box, enter the name of your anchor (for exampe: anchorlink)
6. Click 'OK'

From your toolbar, choose the 'Link' icon:

For Virteom CMS:

For Rocketsites CMS

It will bring up a new window, from the dropdown menu, choose 'Link to Anchor in Text' > Then click over to the 'Advanced' tab, and put the name of your anchor in the 'ID' section, and click 'OK'. 

TIP FOR ANCHORS:

Type a unique name for that anchor, making sure to use only lowercase letters or numbers. Do not use spaces, uppercase letters, or special characters.

LINKING TO ANCHORS AFTER CREATING THEM:

Now that you have created your anchor, you can either give the URL out to have people direct to that exact point on your page, or link text on that page to scroll down to that section.

If you want to give the URL out for people to land directly at that section, you just need to add a pound sign (#) after your URL, with whatever you set your anchor link id to. 

For example, if we set our anchor ID link to "anchorlink" for this page, our URL would look like: https://virteom.com/working-with-links#anchorlink

If you want to link text at the top of a page, to the bottom of the page -- just highlight your text, click the link tool, and in the URL box, enter the #(your anchor ID).  (See what we mean at the top of the page)

This blog was edited on 07/20/2018 by Olivia Justice.