A while back, someone asked me how to post a link to their post without showing the “http://…” text. The code is a simple one to use and most comment areas accept this. Here it is if you want to try it:

<a href=“http://yourpostaddressgoeshere.com/”>Your Post Tittle Goes Here</a>

Sometimes broken links are easy enough to decipher and fix once you get them into the address bar. However, this takes out the guesswork.

• Copy and save the above code in a text editor, like Notepad, to use whenever you need it
• Change the blue and green text to your current post by
  • copying and pasting address between the quotation marks, replacing the blue text
  • copy/paste or type your title text between the >< symbols, replacing the green text
• Copy and paste the code you built, from <a to /a>,  in the HTML (not Visual) editing screen or comment box

NOTE: You don’t need to make it bold or colored. I only did that to make it stand out in this post.

Why do it this way

http://slstellingstories.com/2011/01/prodded-to-wake/ versus Prodded to Wake

Mostly it’s an aesthetic. This code shows your TITLE, or whatever words you put in the title area, as hyperlinks. Some links are so long that they actually break the flow of what you’re reading.

You’ve seen the addresses you click on that don’t work, right? I’ve seen them and built them. I came across one, recently, that had commas in place of periods. Another that had the preview address, so it didn’t connect to the final post destination. I made several interesting mistakes on my own. Once, I left off the closing quotation mark, and it just didn’t work at all.

A few things to insure success

The best way to put your address in the code is to copy and paste it from the browser address bar. Do this after you publish the post, since the preview address is very different from the final address. Copy and paste is a better tactic than re-typing it because it eliminates the possibility of a mis-type.

Don’t use code for quotation marks. If you reveal the code on this page you will see that I used code for the quotation marks. That was only to make them show properly here. (For some reason they went the wrong directions.) Only use the quotation key when making your link. The code for quotation marks won’t convert.

Don’t use this code to tweet. When you paste it, you will see it doesn’t convert completely, which just wastes a lot of your 140 characters. The above code pasted into my Chrome TweetDeck, automatically yields the following:

<a href=“http://j.mp/eCefB4 Post Tittle Goes Here</a>

Leaving you the steps of deleting <a href=”, the </a>, and the title if you wanted to put something else there. It’s quicker to use the built in address shortener. Paste the address from the browser (or everything between the quotation marks in the code) in your tweeting box and let ‘er rip.

This should do it! If you use this code and it doesn’t work, let me know and I’ll take a look at what you have saved and posted. We’ll see if we can’t find the glitch.

This post is part of my #SHINEonline challenge commitment for 2 posts weekly; 2 of 2 for the 3rd week.

In good time for next month’s activities, Jennifer Mattern has released two excellent and versatile progress trackers.

If you need to track words, pages, poems (my other endeavor in November), these are customizable enough to let you post the color and the titles you wish to use.

The other meters I found are over at The Word ‘Mage Blog, my work blog site. Check them all out and see which works best for you. Novel writing word count and the poem count, my giant emoticon counting character; what more could I want?

Whether you call them progress meters or word count trackers,  take advantage of these tools and you’ll covered for November and beyond. Have fun getting ready!