Sunday, June 14, 2009

How to link a tutorial?

I love making tutorials and share ideas. From the many comments and e-mails they get, it seems that you enjoy them too. My tutorials draw a lot of traffic to my blog which I love 'cause it makes me happy when people get inspired by projects or pictures & start getting crafty.
Sometimes, people write me to ask if it's OK if they link my tutorial in their blog. I love that!
However, I don't agree on copy/pasting the full tutorial. The tutorials do take a lot of time and effort to make so I don't want 'em to be copy/pasted just like that. It's OK to put one picture and redirect them to my blog to see the full process. It's fair to give the person behind the tutorial full credit for the work he/she put in there. If you copy/paste a tutorial without asking, I think it's considered theft. Stealing someone else's work is rude and impolite.

So this tutorial will show you how you can properly link to someone elses blog and give credit to the person who made the tutorial. Mind you, this is only for Blogger blogs as that's what I have. I'm sure it's just as easy for other blogs too.

Choose to make a new message for your blog. Give it a title that will draw immediate attention and start writing your message. To add a link to text you wrote, first you have to go to the tutorial that you want to link.Open the blogpost and copy the html by clicking the right mouse button and choose copy.
Now select the text that you want to link and press the link button on the toolbar.
Paste the link to the blogpost in the box and press OK. The text you linked will now show in a different color and will be underlined. That means that people can click on it and it will bring them directly to the full tutorial.You can also add a picture & give it a direct link to the tutorial. First thing you have to do is go to the blog and click with your right mouse button on the picture. Choose the option 'copy picture location'
Then go to your blogpost that you are writing and choose to add a picture to your post.
This window will open and then you post the link to the picture in the box. Do not paste html in here as it won't work, it needs to be the link to the location of the picture. Then press the button to upload the picture to your blog.
It will open another window and say that the picture is uploaded to your blog. Press ready.
Now the picture is visible in your blogpost. You can cut and paste it elsewhere if you like. When you're satisfied about how it looks, press the button 'publish' and your blogpost will be visible for the world.
Here is one of the blogs that I love: Totally Tutorials. It's hosted by Dottyral on Etsy and she collects all sorts of tutorials into one blog. She has a great way of sharing & does it the right way. Dotty has published several of my tutorials and it brings traffic to her and my blog & that's the way it should be.