Blogspot: How to insert an internal cross-reference using anchor points

In case anyone is still trying to figure out how to insert links to other items within a single blog, try this remedy. No guarantees, of course, but it worked for me....

A.      Inserting an internal cross-reference using anchor points

If you are someone who occasionally authors quite long blogs as I do, it can be helpful to your readers to provide links within the blog to other paragraphs or footnotes. 

I haven't so far found an option for creating internal links with the current Blogspot offering – the only option available seems to be creating links to external sites via their full URLs (I may have missed something, so please let me know if you have found one). 

You can, however, insert appropriate HTML code to create internal links yourself, since Blogspot does allow access to the HTML version of your blog directly via the 'Compose/HTML' toggle switch (mid-left of the display). This may seem daunting if you haven't handled HTML code before yourself, but it is worth a try, even if you have no experience of HTML programming (I didn't !). You won't lose your blog, since it's already stored in multiple version in the Google cloud.

To insert the necessary HTML code for a cross-reference, you need two separate elements:

1)    1)  An ‘anchor’ point – this goes at the point where you want the hyperlink to start in your text. The code looks like this:

<a href=”#example _anchor”>anchor text1</a>

2)     2) A reference point – this identifies where you want the reader to jump to in your blog when they hit the hyperlink. It looks like this:

<a id=”example_anchor”>anchor text2</a>

Notice that although “example_anchor” must be exactly the same on both occasions to tie the hyperlink and its reference together, you can have different text representations at the start and end points. You also need any splits in the “example_ anchor” ID represented by underscore (_) characters and not ordinary spaces for this method to work.

Editing your blog’s HTML Code is relatively easy – just Toggle to ‘HTML view’ via the Compose/HTML toggle switch and find the appropriate start and finish points in your blog text. (Hint: use the search button to find the text references – scanning through HTML text manually to find the reference you want can be hard work !). 

Once you've found the hyperlink entry point you want (in this case 'anchor text1'), simply replace it with: <a href="#example _anchor">anchor text1</a>.

Now move to the reference point (in this case 'anchor text2') and replace this with:

<a id=”example_anchor”>anchor text2</a>. If you've got the syntax wrong, the HTML editor will highlight the errors in red. If not, you can now revert to Compose view and update your blog. Once updated, the internal links should work OK when viewing the blog normally.

Also, make sure you get the two elements the right way round - it's easy to mix them up when using the method for the first time.

Happy cross-referencing...

Viv

27/1/23

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