How to Implement Permalinks

---

This is the post I kept trying to enter yesterday… I think it will not now explode, erode, or produce earthquakes. For tomorrow, whether goofy or angry, good or bad, baleful or playful, I promise it will be shorter than this!

---

How to Implement Permalinks

If you're in a big hurry and are very intuitive, here's the short set of instructions:

1. Copy the permalink address from a web site.
2. Insert it and the title you want to use in your own web site.
3. Then readers can click it and go back to that exact post via permalink.

---

Uh, wait a minute, some of us need a little more explanation than that! And, of course, some folks would never do this sort of thing and will hopefully be back tomorrow to see if the subject's changed!

---

Everyone, as a reader, can use a permalink because it's just a link, a thing you click on. If it's there, you can click on it and it takes you somewhere, usually to a different web site. A permalink can take you to another URL, but also straight to a post within the web site. Thus, you don't have to search up and down the web site for it.

Before the reader can use it like that, though, the blogger has to set things up and implement it. That's the hard part, if you've never done one before. Getting each step of the instructions and understanding them was, I found, incredibly difficult the first time around. Even now, I want a better set of instructions, a step-by-step for idiots, so I decided to write them myself. No bigger idiot around than me as far as not being able to "get" the instructions!

Just so that these instructions will seem specific, I'll describe the initial procedure I went through. I just wanted to allow readers of "The Rat Squeaks" to click on a permalink and go straight to the appropriate poem in my other blog, "Judy Garland Blues". So here they are, as boiled down as I could get them and still know what I meant if I read them again next year.

---

My Step-By-Step Instructions To Me
On How to Implement Blogger Permalinks

1. Make sure that you are using post titles because permalinks use titles. Therefore, you need them.
          a. To do this, go to the Blogger Dashboard.
          b. Click Change Settings.
          c. Click Formatting.
          d. Click Yes in the Show Title Field. This will allow post titles.
          e. Click "Save Settings" before leaving that screen.
2. Open the secondary blog--in my case, "Judy Garland Blues".
3. Find the permalink.
          a. It will be located below the post you want to refer back to from the primary blog.
          b. The permalink may appear as no more than a "#"
          c. or as a date such as 05/07/04
          d. or as whatever follows "posted by". The latter may say something like "posted by Ron Southern 05/07/04".
          e. Smart-alecks like me may customize it; mine for instance says, "Eeee! It's a Permalink!" Some customizers, however, make it less discernible, not more.
          f. If your cursor is over the permalink, you'll see a tiny box that says "permanent link" slightly below and to the right of the cursor. It will only appear there while your cursor is hovering over the permalink.
4. Copy the permalink with these steps.
          a. Right-click your mouse while the cursor is on the permalink.
          b. Then click on "Copy Shortcut".
          c. You have now Copied the permalink and have it in memory, ready to be Pasted in the primary blog. You are still in the secondary blog.
5. Open your blog's Blogger editing page or whatever program you use to edit your posts.
          a. Find the location in your editing screen (or in your template) where you intend to insert the coded link to another web site.
          b. Paste the permalink you have in memory into the appropriate place within the code.
6. Here's an example of the code that you write for the link:

<A href=" http://jgblues.blogspot.com/2004_05_02_jgblues_archive.html
#108373812650555943"> <font color=crimson>THE SEDUCTION<
/font></A>
<A href=" http://jgblues.blogspot.com/2004_05_02_jgblues_archive.html#108373812650555943"> <font color=crimson>THE SEDUCTION</font></A>
which will look like this to the reader:

THE SEDUCTION

If the code is entered carefully and correctly, all of the gobbledygook above will be invisible and the only part the reader will see is what you've given as the title. In this case, it says THE SEDUCTION and matches the title of the poem in the other blog. Here, you see that it is underlined and, when clicked on in my primary blog, "The Rat Squeaks", it will take you to the original permalink, my poem in "Judy Garland Blues". Try it. Up there. Go ahead and click it, you know how it works. Read the poem or stick your tongue out at it. Then come Back.

---

That's it, you're through. Until the next time.

The only room for error is when you paste wrongly or otherwise get the code out of order. Keep a copy somewhere (I use Notepad) of the right formula for this code. Use it as a template by copying it each time, placing it in your post, and inserting the correct permalink address and the correct title name. That's all you're doing. Never memorize when you can make a template and paste it in! It's not being lazy (well, yes it is), it's avoiding some of the errors we make when we're in a hurry.

---

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: "Once any system succeeds, it becomes its own worst enemy." - Robert Altman

---