How to Post an Active Link in a Comment

Hi everyone! I thought I would share this with you since it was something that took me a little while of searching to figure out.  Sometimes when you comment on a blog post you might want to include a link to another site (or to shamelessly plug your own blog post 😉)

One option is to just paste the Uniform Resource Locator (URL) also known as the web address for the destination site.  A lot of information is contained in the URL and sometimes these web address can get long.  Not only can they be long but they can also be ugly and not very helpful to inform your readers of what it is they are clicking on.  And sometimes, depending on the forum, the long URL you paste is not automatically converted into an active link for readers to click on and instead they have to copy and paste the text into a web browser to go there.  This is not ideal.

A better solution is to insert a snippet of Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) code to hide that web address behind some appropriate text that you define.  If you are trying to drive traffic to your site you want to make it as easy as possible for people to get there.  An active link gives readers a better description of where the link is taking them and it keeps your comment post nice and neat.

Below is the little bit of coding magic to make it all happen.  To use this code, copy and paste it into your comment field.  Replace the BLUE text with the full URL of the destination page.  Replace the GREEN text with what you want the active link to say.

<a href="http://emn8675.blogspot.com/2018/07/how-to-post-an-active-link-in-a-comment.html">Check out my blog post on active links in comment posts!</a> 

And that's it! When your comment is posted, the HTML code will be rendered as an active link that readers can click on, like this: Check out my blog post on active links in comment posts!

Give it a try and comment on this post with a link to your blog!