One important aspect of social networking is providing links to other web pages. A link to another page in your website is called an internal link and a link to a page outside of your website is called an external link. Links also serve many other purposes. For example, an important way to increase your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) ranking is by providing as many links to high traffic websites as possible. Links can also be used in educational articles to provide the reader with additional references which support your article. In this article, we will review how to add internal and external links to your website.

In an earlier article, we explained that there are some major drawbacks to the default text editor which comes with your Joomla website. We then explained how to add a much better text editor called the FCK editor. We will show you how to provide links using the FCK editor. There is an additional extension which works well with the Joomla FCK Editor. It is called LINKR.

INSTALLING LINKR TO YOUR WEBSITE

Linkr can be downloaded from the Joomla Extension Directory:

 http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/structure-a-navigation/content-links/4010#action

 

Click on the Download button to go to the Download Page:

http://joomlacode.org/gf/project/linkr2/frs/

 

 

LINKR consists of three parts: a Component, a Plug In and a Button. The SuperInstaller includes all three parts. So click on the SuperInstaller. This will take you to a second page:

 

 

Then click on the most recent version (linkr.super_installer_2.3.6). This will bring up the File Download Window:

 

 

Click on SAVE to download the zipped file to your C Drive. Then from your Joomla Control Panel, go to Extensions > Install and upload the file to your website.

 

 

USING LINKR TO ADD INTERNAL LINKS

 

Hopefully, you have also uploaded and enabled the Joomla FCK Editor. To add a link to a new article, from the Joomla Control Panel, go to Content > Article Manager and click on NEW. You can also add links to existing articles by double clicking on them to open up the Article – Edit screen. We will begin with an example of adding an internal link. 

 

Let’s say we wanted to use the FCK Editor and Linkr to add a link from this article back to the earlier article on how to add the FCK editor. First, select the words you want to link to. In this case, we select the words “earlier article” at the beginning of the second paragraph:

 

 

Then click on the “Linkr” Icon at the bottom of the Document Window. This will open up the LINKR screen: .

 

 

Click on ARTICLES then click on the arrow to select the section for the article you want.

Then click on the category for your article. Then click on the article you want. This will bring up a display of the article. (Note that you can also click on the MENU option to select the page you want from the Main Menu):

 

 

Then click on Get Link. This will return you to the Article – Edit screen. The words you selected are now show in blue and underlined:

 

 

CHECKING THAT YOUR NEW LINK ACTUALLY WORKS:

Click on SAVE to save your article. Then go to MENUS > Main Menu and click on NEW to add a new menu item for your new article. Then click on Preview to go to the front end of your website. Click on the new Menu Item for the Creating Links article to go to the actual page:

 

 

Click on the words “earlier article”. Hopefully this will take you to the JCK article:

 

 

USING THE FCK EDITOR TO CREATE AN INTERNAL LINK

There is another way to create an internal link from a Joomla article to another article. If you know the URL of the page you want to link to, you can simply use the FCK Editor. As an example, copy the link to the FCK article as displayed by your web browser:

 

http://springforwardwebdesign.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=58&Itemid=72

 

Now go back to the Article Edit page for the Joomla linking article and highlight a couple of other words in the article we will link to. Then click on the FCK Link Icon near the right side of the second row of the FCK menu:

 

 

This brings up the FCK link screen:

 

 

Copy and paste the link for the FCK article into the space provided for the URL.

Click on the TARGET tab to select whether you want the link to open in a new window or not.

Then click on OK. Next click on APPLY and Preview. Then open up the link article and click on the words you just created a link for. This should also take you to the FCK article.

 

We will next see how to create a link to an external article.

 

CREATING AN EXTERNAL LINK IN A JOOMLA ARTICLE

If you know the URL of the page you want to link to, one way to create an external link is to use the FCK link icon we just used to create an internal link.  Just select the words you want to use as a link, click on the LINK icon and insert the URL into the FCK Link screen. Click on the Target Tab and select Open in a New Window.

 

 

Then click on OK. Again, click on APPLY and Preview to check and make sure that the link actually works.

 

USING LINKR TO CREATE AN EXTERNAL LINK

You can also use LINKR to create an external link. Click on the words you want to use as a link. Then click on the LINKR icon at the bottom of the document window.

 

CREATING WEB LINKS

Joomla also offers a method for helping you keep track of web links.  In order to create a Web Link you need to first create a Weblink Category. From the Joomla Control Panel, go to Components > Web Links > Web Link Categories. Then click the "New" icon in the upper right.

On the page " Category: New [ Weblinks: ]" Complete the following fields:

• Category Title (This will appear in menus)
• Category Name
• Description (Optionally, enter a short description - this can show in web link tables)

 

Then click the "Save" icon in the upper right.

 

 

To create a web link, go to Components > Web Links > Links. This will bring you to the Web Links Manager:

 

 

Click on NEW to open up the Web Links – New page:

 

 

Complete the following fields:

• Name
• Category
• URL
• Description (Optionally, enter a short description, this can show below web link items in a web link table)
• Target

 

Then click the "Save" icon in the upper right.

 

You can then add these links as new menu items. For example, go to Extensions > Module Manager and clicking on the Resources Menu. Set it for the Bottom C position. To add extra links to this menu, go to MENUS > RESOURCES > NEW. In the Menu Items – New screen, click on WEB LINKS at the bottom of the page. Click on Category List Layout. Then select the Joomla category.

 

 

Click on SAVE and then Preview. Scroll down to the Resource Menu and click on Joomla Links:

 

 

This concludes our introduction on adding links to Joomla articles. We will next look at how to add a blog or forum to your joomla website.