How to add a link to AskMe post

April 28, 2005 7:45 AM

I am trying to post a question to Ask MetaFilter and don't see an option to add a Web link.
It's clearly there if I go to respond to someone else's post or if I want to post to MetaFilter.
And I see that others have added web links to their questions.
Am I missing something?
posted by terrier319 to feature requests at 7:45 AM (10 comments total)

you certainly are.
Use HTML
<a href="link">Your Text</a>
to embed links in questions.
posted by seanyboy at 9:09 AM on April 28, 2005

You can either learn to write a hyperlink, or use the comment template elsewhere to compose (but not enter) your submission.

Not too hard, really.
posted by Kwantsar at 9:19 AM on April 28, 2005

Don't forget to test your link after typing it manually. Links must start with http://, I believe.

I typed "google.com" as the href= value.
I typed "http://google.com" as the href= value.
posted by nobody at 9:41 AM on April 28, 2005

What seanyboy & nobody said.

To summarize:

type exactly what seanyboy wrote, but where he wrote "link", put in the web address you want to link to, including the http://
(like nobody's example of http://google.com)

You must keep the " marks on either side of the address.

Where seanyboy wrote Your Text, you place the words that you want highlighted and clickable.
posted by raedyn at 10:13 AM on April 28, 2005

ek. I thought I was being helpful, but maybe I'm confusing the issue further. If I confuse you, feel free to ignore my previous post
posted by raedyn at 10:15 AM on April 28, 2005

It's very simple to make a hyperlink, but any attempt to describe it soon becomes ridiculously complicated. If you can't figure it out from seanyboy's example and raedyn's help... then never mind — just paste the straight address into your comment, without trying to link it.

(And then go look for a simple html tutorial to learn how to make hyperlinks)
posted by taz at 12:14 PM on April 28, 2005

Once you get used to typing <a href="http://www.link.com">link text</a>, it becomes spontaneous. I never use Matt's links, convenient though they are.
posted by Doohickie at 4:42 AM on April 29, 2005

What I do is use a static clipboard entry of the HTML template, then paste in the target link from another open targeted window of the browser I'm using between the quotes, to obviate any typing errors, and then type in my desired text in the 'text' portion. And then Preview...
posted by birdsquared at 9:36 PM on April 29, 2005

Oh, and by the way, I learned the proper format by looking at the source code (most browsers have that as a menu option) for an arbitrary AskMefi answer, which showed me the template.
posted by birdsquared at 9:39 PM on April 29, 2005

birdsquared gets the web.

the comment above is offered totally without sarcasm, snark and smartassery.
posted by quonsar at 5:14 AM on April 30, 2005