Linking an Article to Other Areas of Your AgentAdvantage Site
Monday, August 13, 2007 - By: Brian D
“I have just finished my article and it pops up in a new window. What do I do now?”
“Can I place a link to my article somewhere other than at the bottom of my page where no one can see it?”
When you create an article using the Control Panel’s Article Editor, it posts a link to your article in the links section found at the bottom or side of your web pages (see figure). Often, you may wish to reference this article elsewhere. For example, you may wish to place a link to an article about your area’s beaches prominently in your website’s buttons (see figure). You may have created a home seller’s form in an article that you want to link within another article of text. In these, and many other cases, there’s an easy way to make the links you need.
Our server assigns each article a unique web address or URL. This means that you could enter the URL assigned to the article into a web browser and you will be taken directly to this article on your website, without having to click on any buttons from your site. Because the article has its own address, we can make links to the address in order to access the article. Finding the URL for the article you want to link elsewhere in your site is the important first step.
Find the URL
After creating a new article…
After you click the Proceed button to save your new article (see “How to Create an Article), you will see your article appear in a new window. Place your cursor in the address bar of the browser window containing your article. Highlight the URL in the address bar, and then right-click. Click Copy from the menu. Now you have the URL stored on your computer’s clipboard so that you can paste it where needed.*
From a previously created article…
Finding the URL for an article previously created is fairly simple. Open the Articles Editor under the Articles, Links & Reports menu item in the Website Editor menu. Click on the Edit Existing link on the Articles page. Select the article you would like to use from the drop-down menu. Then click View. The article will appear in a new window. Place your cursor in the address bar of the browser window containing your article. Highlight the URL in the address bar, and then right-click. Click Copy from the menu.
*If you are running many programs simultaneously on your computer (i.e., you have a few web browser windows open while you are working on a spreadsheet, and you are working in your photo editor on some photos of one of your listings), you may wish to either be sure you keep the window with your article open, or paste the URL you have copied into a blank Notepad window. But if you do neither of these things, you can follow the instructions on obtaining your link from a previously created article.
Places Where You Can Paste the Link
For Main Page Buttons
To make a button for the article, open Modify Your Buttons under Site Settings from the Website Editor menu. Details for each navigation button are found here. At the bottom of this page, find the Add New Custom Link area (see figure).
Then, do the following:
- Enter the text you would like the button to read.
- Click the radial button next to Link to alternate URL: then paste the URL from the address bar of the article you copied earlier.
- Check this box if you would like your article to open in a new window. We recommend doing this in general so that clients do not get diverted from your content.
- You can change the order of your buttons using the arrow keys. So if you would like your article to appear closer to the top of the order of buttons, adjust the order here.
- Save your button by clicking the yellow Save or Save &View button.
Within Captions and Articles (HTML Editor)
Sometimes you may wish to reference another “article,” whether it’s another piece of text, or a form, or a smart-frame search page within a text article or caption. This section will show you how to link your article in a piece of text using the HTML Editor.
For more information on the HTML Editor, see the HTML Editor How-to Guide.
In either an article (Website Editor àArticles, Links & Reports àArticles Editor àCreate New or Edit Existing) or in the Caption section of Main Body Copy and Images, you can insert a link to the article from which you copied its URL.
Follow these steps to link your article’s URL to within another text article or caption:
- Open the HTML Editor in either an article or the Caption section of Main Body Copy and Images by clicking on the yellow Edit button.
- The HTML editor will open. Begin typing your text.
- Highlight the text you would like to make into a link.
- Click on the icon resembling a chain and globe. The Link dialog box will open.
- Paste the URL you copied earlier into the URL text box. When you do this, remove the “http://” from the URL. To the left of a text box that gives you a variety of protocols (This is not important in this tutorial but is covered in others.) from which to choose. For our purposes, keep the pull-down menu default setting, “http://.” This automatically places “http://” ahead of the remainder of the URL.
- In the Link dialog box, move right to the Target tab. In the left Target pull-down menu, select _blank. This will ensure that your article will open in a new window. If you would rather have your article open in the same window, no action is required.
- Click the OK button.
- Click the Proceed button in the HTML Editor
- Click the black Proceed button in the Articles Editor or in Main Body Copy and Images.
- If you have made the link within an article, your article should pop up in a new window. To see changes made within a caption, click View My Site at the top of the Control Panel.
Now you have the knowledge necessary to link articles within other articles. No more will you scratch your head after making an article thinking, “Gee, I wish that I could have people find this other than down at the bottom of my page.” This process is very similar to making links to other URLs from other websites. Explaining this process, however, begs repeating as too often customers don’t even realize that their articles even have URLs.
