Creating links - Home | University of Exeter of Exeter Site Manager Manual Creating links 1 University of Exeter Web Team, January 2012 Creating links Introduction People come to a

University of Exeter Site Manager Manual Creating links 1

University of Exeter Web Team, January 2012

Creating links

Introduction People come to a site looking for links that will take them to what they are looking for. They will click and scan the page

they arrive on for the right information, and if they don’t find it they’ll scan the page for a likely link that will take them

onwards to the right information, and so on. So links need to be easy to find and understand, as they serve as signposts

allowing people to find their way around quickly and efficiently.

Links that appear in the navigation on the University website are generated from section names in Site Manager. The

same principles for effective link text outlined in this guide apply to those links, but there is a separate guide to naming

sections effectively. This guide focuses on how to make effective links in your page content.

Choosing effective link text Make your link text clearly describe where you will go when you click the link. The text you use should be as

short as possible but also long enough to identify where the link goes, or what you will do when you get there. eg ‘Go back to the home page’ ‘Visit our virtual tours’ ‘Find out more about our services for students’

Never use ‘click here’, or worse still ‘here’, or any other similarly vague link text, such as ‘Read more’, or ‘Find out more’, that doesn’t make sense out of context or clearly indicate the target of the link.

o These are difficult for people scanning a page for onward links, who are looking for the relevant key words.

o Having such key words in your link text can also help boost your page’s position in search engine results.

o Link text that doesn’t make sense out of context also confuses people using screen-reading software, which can be set to read out just the links on a page.

Don’t use the same link text more than once on a page for links that go to different target pages. Different links need to be distinguishable from each other. So using ‘here’ as a link (which you should never do) to several different target pages from the same page is very bad practice in more ways than one. Equally, don’t use something like ‘our Accommodation site’ to link to different pages in that site from the same page – specify the particular page in the site which you are linking to: eg ‘For more information visit the prospective postgraduates’ accommodation page.’

Avoid using URLs for links in web page text. It is best practice to use a short self-explanatory phrase as a link. eg ‘See the Special Collections home page’ rather than ‘See as.exeter.ac.uk/library/about/special’ This helps both users and your search engine rankings, since you are using the key words users are looking for in your link text and search engine robots will use these to index your page.

If your link is to open a file such as a pdf or Word document, or will open in a new window, then indicate this so the user knows what to expect. eg ‘Application form (pdf)’ ‘UCAS website (opens in a new window)’

http://www.exeter.ac.uk/accommodation/postgraduate/

http://as.exeter.ac.uk/library/about/special/

http://as.exeter.ac.uk/library/about/special/

http://www.ucas.ac.uk/



Creating links in Site Manager

Having established what your clear and effective link text will be, there are two main ways to link to other web

pages or to specific content on other web pages:

linking to external pages (in sites other than the University site or to University pages not yet managed

in Site Manager)

and linking to University of Exeter pages that are also managed within Site Manager.

Links to external web pages or University of Exeter web pages not within Site Manager

On the content template page, highlight the text to be linked and click on the ‘Insert Web Link’ button in the

editing toolbar.

A popup window appears.



Link URL: Type in, or paste, the full URL of the web page you wish to link to, eg http://www.bbc.co.uk. You

need to have the ‘http://’ included, but if you should miss it, you will be prompted to put it in when you click the

Insert button.

Anchors: This will list any anchors you have created earlier – internal page bookmarks you can use to make

links from the top of your page to paragraphs on the same page. These will only exist if you have created them

using the ‘Insert/edit anchor’ button. See instructions for ‘Creating internal page links using anchors’.

Target:

The ‘Target’ determines where the link opens up, ie in the current window, or as a new window. Best practice,

and the default, is that it opens in the existing window. A target of ‘None (use implicit)’ will use the default

value, so this can be left as is.

The only other alternative you might need to use from the drop-down menu is ‘New window (_blank)’ to open a

link in a new window. This needs to be used very sparingly. Most users expect a link to open in the same

window, and if they want to open one in a new window, it should really be their choice, not forced on them. You

may think opening an external site in anew window prevents people from leaving your site. However, you don’t

stop people leaving your site just by keeping your own pages available in a different browser window; again, if

they choose not to return to your pages, that’s their choice. Also people use the browser’s Back button very

frequently if they decide they want to go back to a page they’ve already visited; if a link opens in a new window

and they want to come back to your page, they have to switch back to a separate browser tab or window,

rather than just go back in the browser history, and this can be disorienting.

If you decide you need to open a link in a new window, then you must indicate this to the user by specifying it

in the text, so they know what to expect. Eg ‘For further information please see the BBC website (opens in a

new window).’

http://www.bbc.co.uk/



Title:

In most cases you do not need to enter a Title, but you can do if you wish to add further information about the

page the link is going to, eg if your link text within a sentence is ‘preservation of coral reefs’, and the link goes

to the profile for a member of staff researching this area, you may like to add a link title stating ‘Profile of

Professor Peter Mumby, Professor of Marine Ecology’.

The title will appear in most browsers as a tooltip when the user of your page hovers their mouse over the link.

Some screen readers also read out link titles. However, since not all such software or all browsers display it,

do not put anything vital in a link title. If the destination of the link is entirely obvious from your link text, which it

should be, do not use a link title at all.

Never just repeat your link text in the title – it’s better to leave it blank than have this repetition, which can be

annoying for screen reader users who may then hear the same text twice.

Class: You can ignore this field as we do not use it.

Click ‘Insert’.

The link is now shown as a hyperlink:

Email links

Use this same external link method to create an email link that opens an email with the target contact’s email address. In this case, though, rather than using a web address in the URL field of the Insert Link popup window, use ‘mailto:’ followed by the email address (with no space between it and ‘mailto:’). Eg,



Links to University of Exeter pages maintained in Site Manager

Section links allow you to make links to other sections in the Site Manager structure. Always use this method

when linking to other pages that are managed and published by Site Manager. This method creates relative

links, so that if a section is later moved elsewhere in the site structure, the links will not be broken. This can

save you a lot of maintenance in fixing broken links and your users will still be able to find the pages you are

linking to.

Creating links to sections

To link to another page that is managed in Site Manager, navigate to the section where you want to create the

link, and open the piece of content where you want the link text to appear.

Select the text you want for your link. Click on the ‘Insert section link’ button in the editing toolbar:

A popup will appear displaying the site structure in Site Manager.

Navigate to the section in the structure that you want to link to and click on its name.



Your highlighted text will now be linked to that section. When you hover over the link text in the content area,

you will see the path to the section you have linked to in the structure.

Find the

section name

you want to

link to in the

structure and

click it.



Creating links to content

Sometimes content on a single page (section) in Site Manager is divided into separate pieces of content, eg

In this example if you want to link directly to the corresponding paragraph on ‘Car sharing’ from your page,

highlight the text you want to use for your link and click the ‘Link to content’ button.

A popup will appear displaying the site structure in Site Manager.



Navigate to the section in the structure that you want to link to and click on its name. A second popup window

appears displaying the list of content in that section. Select the relevant content you want to link to from the list:

Your link to the selected content is created:

Click on the

piece of

content you

want to link

to within this

page.



Creating internal page links using anchors

This page has content covering shops available in four different University locations, so a list of links is

provided at the top of the page to allow quick links to each location:



To create these links, first you need to insert anchors in each part of the content that you want to link to. Place

your cursor next to the heading or paragraph you want to link to and click the ‘Insert anchor’ button.

A popup appears where you enter the name for your anchor.

Anchor names must

be short and unique within the same page - do not use the same name for more than one anchor in

your section

be all lower case

be composed of any of the letters a-z, and digits 0-9, but the only punctuation marks that can be used

are hyphens (-), underscores (_), colons (:), and full stops (.)

always start with a letter, never any other kind of character.

Best practice is to use a single relevant and understandable word as the anchor name will appear at the end of

the web address displayed in the browser address bar when the in-page link is clicked.

Place cursor where you

want to be able to link to

and click the Anchor

button



When you have put in the name, click ‘INSERT’.

An anchor symbol shows where you have inserted the anchor name:

Now you have your anchor to link to, set up the link by typing the link text at the top of the page, highlight it and

click the ‘INSERT WEB LINK’ button.

Select the anchor from the Anchors drop-down menu:



Click INSERT. Your link is now inserted.

Continue until all your anchors and links are in place for the page.

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Creating links - Home | University of Exeter of Exeter Site Manager Manual Creating links 1 University of Exeter Web Team, January 2012 Creating links Introduction People come to a