Creating your Link:
The first thing you need to do is make a link for yourself. It should have keywords
and descriptions in a few places, and I'll put up directions and an example. It's not too
hard to do but if you don't get the brackets and quotes and things in the right place,
it won't work.
The first thing you need is some keywords for your site. We'll use Chris Uglanica's
link because no one knows how to pronounce his last name. OK, he has "Edmonton
Wedding Photographer" for his keywords. He has the same thing for his description,
so that makes things a little easier. Here's what his link tags look like:
<a href="http://www.cuphotography.ca/" title="Edmonton Wedding Photographer" target="_blank">Edmonton Wedding Photographer - <strong>Chris Uglanica Photography</strong></a>
OK, now what does all that mean? Well, the first part with the "<a href>"
tells the browser where to go. You put your Web site URL between the quotes. Our example
doesn't have ".com" at the end because Chris is from the Great White North where
they use kilometres and litres and their dollar is worth a couple pennies so his URL ends
with ".ca", instead. Make sure
you put in the "http://" part of it in there. It won't work otherwise.
Now, the next thing is the "title" tag. That's where you put the description
of your site. Load it up with the keywords you want. Incidentally this is also the text
that'll pop up when you hold your mouse cursor over the link.
After the title we'll end
the anchor tag (that's what the "a" stands for) with a way to make it so that
when you click on it it'll open a different window. Technically, you're not supposed to
use this tag but everyone does, anyway. "They" decided it wasn't a good tag so
they "deprecated" it (whatever that means). But there isn't a good replacement
and all the browsers support it so we'll keep using it. Anyway, the next thing we need
is the target="_blank" and then close the tag with a "/>."
Got it? I hope so. Now what you need is the name of your site. This is the text that
shows up, usually with an underline, that people can click on. With Chris' example
above, he has
Edmonton Wedding Photographer - <strong>Chris Uglanica Photography</strong>
"But wait," I hear you saying, "what's up with those <strong> tags?"
Those just make things bold. That's all. It's better than using <b> tags, which also
make things bold because, uh, just take my word for it. I've written too much about
useless information as it is.
Here's another example with more "hidden" keywords
<a href="http://www.capturedbycandi.com" title="Louisville Kentucky Wedding Photography" target="_blank">CapturedbyCandi Louisville Kentucky Wedding Photographer - <strong>Candi Gurgon</strong></a>
So, now you can look at these example and make your own link. You can either put your
link on the OSP Link Exchange thread or you can send an e-mail to links@squierphotography.com.
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Using the super-cool PHP script on your links page.
This should be easier. At least I hope it's easier to type in than that stuff on the
left side. Anyway, you don't want to be bothered to update your links page on you site
every time someone wants "in" on the OSP link exchange. That's my job. So,
rather than telling everyone to update their pages, you can just use my page to update
your page automatically. It's pretty easy to do
but, again, you have to do it carefully because if you mess up, it won't work.
First you'll need a new Web page. The easiest thing to do is to copy your home page
(or "splash" page) and save it (in the same directory) as "links.php" --
the extension is important. It shouldn't be ".html" or ".htm" or
anything like that.
So, you have a new page that looks just like your home page. You need to get rid of all
the "guts" of the page while leaving in the structure. If you have no idea what
I mean, you might be better off asking someone else to do this part. Just show this page
to whoever's helping you.
Then you put something like <h1>OSP Links:<h1> and now comes the fun part.
You need to insert this "magic" code:
<?php include("http://www.squierphotography.com/links/osplinks.inc"); ?>
And that's it. You now have a shiny, new OSP links page on your site. But you still
need a way to get to that page from your site. Remember your home page (or
"splash" page)?
We're now going to edit that page and not just save a copy to fiddle with. But the first
thing you should do is to save it as a copy (I lied, sorry) so you can get it back if
you really mess things up.
All you need is to put a link to your new "links" page on your home page
somewhere. People usually put it at the bottom, unless you're weird like me and put it
at the top of every page on your site. Here's what you'll put on your home page at
the bottom:
<a href="/links.php">OSP Links"</a>
Once you've done that, you'll have a links page that updates itself whenever I update
my links page, which I plan to do whenever there's a new link. I could also put nasty
messages on your site and you'd probably never know, so be nice to me, ok?
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