All the best,
Theresa Cahill
http://www.mywizardads.com

…and yes, we are working on adding cookies or sessions to solve the lost comment if you don’t type in the CAPTCHA the first time right. On deck. Sorry that feature isn’t done yet. Soon. :)

Happily, I crafted the message in another program anyway, so here it is:

URLs 101

URL means Universal Resource Locator. Think of it as the address. The http:// or ftp:// or whatnot refers to the protocol so the computer knows what kind of thing to expect. If you want to dish up a website you’re going to use http:// or maybe https:// (which adds the “s” for secure). Most people don’t have https for their site’s primary name.

Http:// is “Hyper Text Protocol” while FTP is “File Transfer Protocol” for instance.

A lot of software programs, including most e-mail programs and article submission sites will render a URL active if the complete protocol PLUS domain name PLUS file name (file name is optional) is given. Thus, this is a complete URL: http://www.EzineArticles.com and is active, meaning if you click it, you’ll be taken to EzineArticles.com’s main page. Notice that the second name is not active. Click all you like, but you won’t go anywhere but slowly insane. ;-)

This making URLs active is nifty indeed. In fact in e-mails or in your e-mail signature it’s always a good idea to include the complete URL so your respondent can easily get to the page you mention or visit your site. If you don’t make the link active a reader must actually go to their browser and type in the address, leading the way for errors in misspelled names or other goof-ups. Typing mistakes plus basic laziness (I’ll visit it later) means you won’t get as many visitors as you may have otherwise.

What Happens If You Include a Period (or Full Stop)

If the URL happens to come at the end of a sentence and the writer includes a period as is customary when writing, then that URL is now broken since the active link includes everything leading up to the next space. That happens simply because your software knows that web addresses end with a space, so until the first one is reached everything that comes before is included in the site address. Try it. Open your e-mail program and send yourself a message including http://www.Ezinearticles.com and Ezinearticles.com and you’ll see what happens. Then try http://www.EzineArticles.com. I’m typing this in NotePad Pro which automatically corrected that end of url period, but most programs don’t do this. Way smart on NotePad Pro’s part I might say. Most programs also highlight in blue the active links.

Note that in AOL you used to have to include the full HTML code to get their links active, and I’m not sure if that’s still the case. If so, you’d need EzineArticles.com to make it active and frankly that’s a huge hassle so not many do this. So, if you’re an AOL user, I’m not sure if this will work correctly for you.

If you include the period, the URL is broken and your visitor will be presented with a 404 error page or the browser will simply say it can’t find the page. Both are bad and to be avoided at all costs.

To avoid errors either re-write your sentence so the URL doesn’t come at the end, or simply put a space first, then the period. Yes that looks weird but it’s better than an incorrect web address.

One other point, capitalization doesn’t count in domain names, so many people will capitalize their name for easier reading, but after the domain name it does matter, so if your web pages aren’t all lower case, be careful to get that correct capitalization as well.

Kathryn

P.S. Usually one wouldn’t include a resource or sig file in a comment, but notice the sender’s name is highlighter and actually is an active link to their website? Cool beans.

Fran

Fran

Great tip. Here’s a pet peeve of mine: Don’t tell me to just go to your website. Tell me why I should bother visiting.

Offer me a Free White Paper. Or a free list of tips. Or tell me how many free articles I can read. Or tell me about your contest or survey.

In my author resource box I always say, “Subscribe to her free ezine, ‘The Publicity Hound’s Tips of the Week’ at http://www.PublicityHound.com and receive free the handy checklist ‘89 Reasons to Send a News Release.’”

Joan Stewart
The Publicity Hound
http://www.PublicityHound.com

Thanks for educating us on what a “Full Stop” is… I had never heard that and it was good to learn more about what that is. Wikipedia had an interesting article on it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_stop

This is a really helpful article because (to me) when I finish a sentence, I automatically add a full-stop. Hey, I’m an Aussie and full-stops are what you blokes call ‘periods’, OK?

All jokes aside though, this article has brought home to me that I have to be very,very careful everytime I post a signature anywhere, but especially here because its my favourite Ezine for Articles, that the full-stop in this case will be just that….a real full-stop. That is not what I want nor will it be a benefit to those I’m trying to help.

So from now on, I am putting a full-stop to doing that. Period.