Most people do not understand the built in
bbCode tag system that is available on most forums out there, and not knowing
can make your links look positively atrocious. Don’t get me wrong, I know most
of the people here know HTML pretty well, but we all know that does not work
while writing a post. So to make DP a better looking forum I thought I’d help
out a bit by explaining how to actually post a link here.
The URL tag is what you generally see here on
Digital Point though it is not the only way to link to another page. In fact,
it’s not always the best way to link to another page. So below I will do my
best to explain the various ways to link to another site or page.
- General Linking is done via the URL tag which there are two
ways to use. The first is [url]http://yourlink.com[/url] but that is
rather ugly, so you may prefer the more advanced version.
[url=http://yourlink.com]anchor text[/url]
EX: [noparse][url=http://www.digitalpoint.com]digitalpoint[/URL][/noparse] - Use the [noparse] bbcode. This will make www.digitalpoint.com
into a NON URL like www.digitalpoint.com (this actually works on MOST
forums)
EX: [noparse]www.digitalpoint.com[/noparse] - Some forums offer the [nofollow]
bbcode, but that does have it's draw backs. It's still followed by server
stats (as in if you linked to the DP from a no-follow link Shawn could
still see that someone clicked from there to here via something like
AWStats). [nofollow] works the same as the [url] bbcode but
adds the re="nofollow" tag. Keep in mind that this does not work
on all forums.
EX: [noparse][NOFOLLOW=http://www.digitalpoint.com]digitalpoint[/NOFOLLOW][/noparse] - You could also do random things like add in spaces www .
digitalpoint . com or something else like that, but it honestly just does
not look all that great.
Additionally you can do some shorthand
internal linking to other areas of the forum. These come in handy while writing
up your signature as they take up less space allowing you to better utilize
your anchor text. Keep in mind, unlike other links, these will open in the same
window.
- Linking to a thread is as easy as [thread=thread_ID]anchor text[/thread]
- You can also link to an individual post using
[post=post_id]anchor text[/post]
It's generally a good idea to check out what
other nifty things have been added as well. For bbCodes check vB
code(Other forums may have additional or differing code). For
instance, Digital Point has a SEARCH tag which works like this: [search=Search Engine]search term[/search]
Search Engine can be one of; google, yahoo, msn
Q