A Plain Link
Before we can get to all the cool fancy stuff, you need to understand how to make a basic link.
Here you have a simple code to Neopets. On top you see the actual link and right below you see the HTML I used to get that link. Now, since we are on Neo-Reality (bet you didn't know that XD) we have a stylesheet and part of that stylesheet is a code that affects every link on this site, which is the only reason that the link is nicely formatted and not blue and underlined.
The <a href="URL"> of the code tells the computer that this is a link and that the creator of the link wants the person who clicks on it to be transferred to the URL. The URL is just a fancy word for web address. Anything that starts with a "http://www" is a URL. They usually end with .com, .net, .tk, .org, .edu and so on. Neopets would be "http://www.neopets.com". The "http://www." is very important in making a link because without it, you are stuck in the present website host.
So now we have the first half. The second half is just as easy. The next part, in the example, Neopets! is the part that will be visible to the general public. When you open a page and it has a link on it, such as say the link you clicked to get to this tutorial, you will not see the whole "a href=" deal, just "Neopets!". So here you type whatever you want the link to say. Then the final part of the code is </a>, which just tells your computer that the code is done. Should you forget to add this, your entire text after the <a href="http://www.neopets.com"> will be one giant link and that looks EXTREMELY n00bish. So always just put the code on your site in whole.
Formatting your Links
You can make your links have the same effects as text by simply opening and closing the appropriate tags before and after your link code. Here's an example for a bold link:
You can use almost any formatting codes on links, like bold, italics, font color... and the list goes on. Below are some examples of what you can add to your normal link code:
Link Targets
If you click on the Neopets link at the very top, you'll notice that the a window pops up with Neopet's frontpage on it. This is because the link was targetted outside of Neo-Reality. To do this, take your normal link tags and add in "target="_blank" to it:
It actually doesn't always have to be "_blank" to target outside the site. As long as you don't have any frames on your layout, it can be any word after the target tag. If you do have frames, putting in the name of a frame on your layout will target the page to the frame instead.
You can also target within a single page. Say your page is really long and your visitors generally only want to go to one section of the page, then you can add link targets to specific heading. Suppose I wanted people to be able to target to the first heading of this page (A Plain Link). I give the link target name "plain" to the heading. So then I would scroll up to that heading and add
You can also use this attribute to make links that will transport you back to the top of the page. All you have to do is make a link that looks like this on your page:
Hover Tags
Linking with images can be easy to create that little yellow box that appears when you hover over something, you just have to add the "alt" tag to the image code. But with straight liks, it may be a little harder. For this, you will need to use title tags in your link.