Linking to your documents

When you link to a document off your website, the link looks like this:

When you link to a document on your own website, the link looks different:

It's not as intimidating as it looks. To make a new link, it's easiest to copy an old one and make the few changes required. Most of that code stays the same -- you only change the areas of text highlighted in red.

What you're entering in a link

Any one page on the website consists of several files pieced together, like a puzzle. When you write a link, you're telling the scipt ("main.php") which pieces to use.

... to this colour map of a web page from the AML site:

What content do you want to show?

This is the article, lesson plan, membership form, etc. Most file names end with the extension ".html", but when you enter the name of the file in the link, you leave that extension out.

What menu do you want to show?

This is the name of the menu that you want displayed in the left margin. All menus use the prefix "menu_", but when you enter the name of the menu in the link, you leave the prefix out.

What special effect do you want?

You don't need to touch the final $css portion of the link, just make sure it's intact. This portion of the link tells the php script that a visitor to the website wants the page displayed with a larger font, or a high-contrast colour scheme, or in a printer-friendly format.

What name do you want to appear as a hyperlink?

This is usually the title of the feature article, lesson plan, etc., but it can be any text you want hyperlinked, such as "click here."

How to indent a submenu link

Submenu links in the left margin are indented a bit from the left:

To tag a link as a submenu link, you just tuck in class="link2" at the very end of the opening tag, before the closing greater-than sign (>):

‹a href="main.php?show=index_med_sep11&sub=news&css=‹?php echo $css ?›" class="link2"›September 11‹/a›