You've got your first post up and I'm sure there'll be many more to come. Let's switch gears a bit and create some links to the Church sites.
If you are still inside of Typepad, click on the word "Typelists." If you're not still inside of Typepad, using your "username" and "password" log back in at www.typepad.com and then click on the word "Typelists."
You'll see a section entitled "Create a New Typelist." In the first box is a drop-down menu with the word "People" selected. I suggest you leave that selected. There are several other choices you could make here, but I found the simplest one is "People."
In the second box, you'll see "List Name:" — choose a name that you'd like to use for your first set of links. To give you more reality on the types of names you could choose, head over to my blog and look over the names I've given various groups of links. Click here to do so.
So go ahead and choose a name and then click the button below "Create new list."
What shows up next might be a bit confusing, but the simplest thing to do is click on "Add a new item" which is towards the left and top of your screen.
A smaller box should open up on your screen with several different things you could do. Once again, keeping it simple, you want to enter information in the box entitled "Name:"
Here is where it gets a bit technical. What you want to enter in the "Name:" box are essentially two things:
1) The information that will take your reader to the place you want to send them, for example, to a Church site
2) A brief explanation of where you are sending them.
And both of these items are strung together in a series of letters, numbers and words that do just that. It tells your visitor where they're headed and when they click on the link, they go there!
So, we might as well jump in and look at an example of a string of text that creates a link that will take your visitor to the Volunteer Minister's web site and tells them that's where they're going:
<a href=http://www.volunteerministers.orga>Volunteer Ministers</a>
You'll see this string of text starts with <a href= and ends with </a>
Whenever you create a link, those beginning and closing items are always the same.
After the <a href= you see the following:
http://www.volunteerministers.org
That is the full information needed to create a web address. In this case, the web address takes a person to the Volunteer Minister's web site. In order to create the link inside of Typepad, you need to type it out fully to: http://www.volunteerministers.org
What comes after that is an arrow pointing to the right >
And after the arrow are the words: Volunteer Ministers
To finish off this string of text we see </a>
Let's take a few seconds to locate some of these characters that you will be typing:
• The arrow pointing to the left < is just above the "comma" on the keyboard and is accomplished by holding down the "shift key" and typing the "comma" key.
• The arrow pointing to the right > is just above the "period" on the keyboard and is accomplished by holding down the "shift key" and typing the "period" key.
• The forward slash character / is located just below the question mark on the keyboard.
So, reviewing the entire string of text, we have:
<a href=http://www.volunteerministers.orga>Volunteer Ministers</a>
Going back to the small window that was (and should still be) open — the window that will allow you to create your first link — you would type in that entire string of text into the "Name:" box and then click "Save Item" at the bottom of the window.
You have now created your first link to a Church site. You can continue to add more to this group of links. You can also create new groups giving them different names, if you like. The different groupings I used were:
Questions and Answers
How Scientology Improves Our World
Churches of Scientology
Blogs & Web Sites of Scientologists
Recommended Reading
Other Key Sites
You may use any or all of those groupings if you like, but I recommend you create some unique titles for you blog.
Now it's time for a SHORT CUT! I figured out a fast and easy way to create these links.
Take your first link that you've put together and put it in a word document or any program that will allow you to copy and paste text. (If you are not familiar with "copy" and "paste," go to this web site and you'll know all about it in just a couple of minutes)
The first link we put together sends people to the Volunteer Minister's web site:
<a href=http://www.volunteerministers.org>Volunteer Ministers</a>
I then go to a web site that I want to link to and I copy the web address at the top of the window.
Going back to our first link, I then select the text: http://www.volunteerministers.org and I paste in the web address of the next site.
Let's look at an example. I've got the first link of:
<a href=http://www.volunteerministers.org>Volunteer Ministers</a>
I then go to the Dianetics web site and I copy the web address I find there which is:
http://www.dianetics.org (sometimes there is more text in the web address. If so, simply copy it all)
I then go back to my first string of text:
<a href=http://www.volunteerministers.org>Volunteer Ministers</a>
and I select the text: http://www.volunteerministers.org
I then paste in the text: http://www.dianetics.org (that I copied from the Dianetics web site)
and I now get the following:
<a href=http://www.dianetics.org>Volunteer Ministers</a>
I then select the text: Volunteer Ministers and I type in "Learn About Dianetics" or "Find Out About Dianetics", something along those lines. And it looks like this:
<a href=http://www.dianetics.org>Learn About Dianetics</a>
When the link shows up on your blog, it simply looks like this:
Learn About Dianetics
You are now able to create a ton of different links. You can link to all kinds of great Church sites. You can link to other Scientologist's blog sites and/or web sites. You can even link to my blog. Send me an email that you've done so and I'll be glad to link back to you!
In the next post, we'll take a few minutes and figure out where to put these links. The next step is much simpler than this one, it simply comes down to choosing whether you want the links on the left or the right side of your blog.