Right, quick one. If you comment on other people's blogs (you should, it's how anyone finds you), the deal is you leave your name and a link to your own blog. Most people have this sorted. A good chunk of you do not, and I want to fix that today.
Here's the actual problem though. A lot of you either don't have a clickable link at all, just the plain words www.blogger.com sitting there doing nothing, or you've got a link that looks fine and then it doesn't work when someone clicks it. That's because you're missing part of the web address you actually need when you paste your signature into the comment box.
I keep my comment signature saved in a notepad file on my computer, so I can copy and paste it in whenever I need it, which I'm going to assume is what most people do, unless you're genuinely typing this out fresh every single time. That's commitment.
Here's mine, so you can see what it actually looks like once it's working.
Tegan xx - Permanent Procrastination
Name, link to my blog, done. There are plenty of ways you could style your own version, but here's the actual code underneath it.
Your Name xx - <a href=http://www.yourblogaddress.blogspot.com>Your Blog Name</a>
That's the whole thing. "Your Blog Name" is the bit that gets linked, swap it for whatever text you want people to click.
The important part is making sure you include the "http://www" when you're writing your link. Even though you can happily type your own blog into your own address bar as just "blogname.com" and it'll find you fine, if you drop that same shortened version into someone else's comment section, clicking it will often just bolt it onto the end of whatever page they're already on. So instead of landing on your blog, they end up somewhere like "www.theirblog.com/yourblog.com" staring down an error page that flatly does not exist, because it doesn't. They can fix the address bar themselves and get to you eventually, sure, but wouldn't you rather it just worked the first time?
Some comment boxes don't accept html at all. Most do. Regular Blogger does, Disqus does, so does Wordpress. A few of the newer ones that get you to log in through a social account don't, so if you paste your code in and nothing links up, that's probably why. Usually if it says "some html allowed" under the box, and you can spot the <a> tag in that allowance, you're good to paste your link.
I genuinely look forward to seeing everyone's new comment signatures. Give it a go and test it out in the comments below, and I'll help you sort out anything that isn't quite linking up properly.
More from Blogging 101:
- The Sidebar
- Template Design Basics
- Creating a Photo Header
- Setting out a Blog Post
- Add Your Blog Link to Comments
- Create a Favicon for Your Blog
- How to Remove the Frame on Bloglovin'
> # end of file
> find me on instagram if that's your thing.
> # signing off