OK, I hope you have this straight now - blue clicky things change color once you've visited a site. For the life of me, I can't figure out what color they change to - cyan, or yuck green, or something like that, I think. On the Forum Menu, you can tell from the color of the links which threads you've reviewed and which you haven't. And when the thread has a new message posted to it, your link turns blue again.

This is also a good way to know right off if the links you post are good. When you post a link, your link will be blue only if you have not visited the linked site recently. I would assume you've visited the site to copy the URL (according to the sound advice Joe Offer gave you), so that means your link should NOT be blue when you post it.

Seems there's another misunderstanding that needs to be cleared up. When you type things up to post in the forum, the HTML tags must be visible to you <and enclosed in angle brackets> when you type or paste them into the "reply to thread" box. What you type in the "reply" box is just plain text, with no special effects. The HTML tags don't work in the "reply" box because the box is set just for text. Once you hit the "submit" button, your words and HTML tags are recorded on the file for this page on the hard drive of the Mudcat Main Computer. When somebody else then looks at this page with a Web browser, their browser will then interpret your HTML tags and display all those cute little special effects you entered.

If you want to see what this page looks like in plain text, move your mouse cursor over to a white space on this page, and click your right mouse button. Choose "view source" from the menu that appears, and a window will open with the text version of this page. Then you can see all the HTML tags Max and others have used to produce this page - and you will see that it's a pretty remarkable thing Max has done for us.

Note to JoeClones®: Please be very careful if you feel moved to fix something in a message that has complicated HTML in it - like Jon's message above, or my link samples below. One little click of your edit button can mess the whole thing up. If you have to fix something, do a "view source" and edit the message in the test window that opens, and then paste the corrected text into the "reply" box. I know Jon's spelling can be horrible at times, but it's better to put up with his spelling, and allow him to create the marvelous things he gives us. I suppose the same could be said for Max's spelling....
(did I say that??? <snicker>)

Jon, now that I've gotten a little "dig" in on you, let me say your little box is marvelous. Still, I think it would be better if those who would like to do HTML here would learn HTML. A few little tags can work wonders, and I'm afraid that people who rely on boxes like Jon's can end up making some really messy mistakes because they do far more than they know. HTML can do wonderful things, but I think it's better if you know what you're doing before you do it (feel free to practice in HTML threads, of course, since your practice messages will be deleted sooner or later). If you do make a mistake, wherever it is, post a request for help in the Help Forum and somebody will gladly fix your goof.

The Logic of Links

Links are actually fairly easy to make, once you understand the logic behind them. Remember that all HTML tags <are enclosed in angle brackets>. The workings of HTML start with one tag (<a href=...>, in the case of a link). They do their work, and then are closed with a slash and a repeat of the original command (</a> in the case of a link). Everything between those two tags is what is affected by the tags (in the case of a link, whatever is between the tags becomes an hreference).
OK, now look at the links below and see if they make sense to you.
-Joe Offer-

<a href="http://www.mudcat.org/">Click here</a>

<a href="mailto:joe@mudcat.org/">Click to e-mail</a>

If you're posting links at Mudcat, the quotation marks are optional. I prefer not to use them, because they complicate the task of making links. Simple is better, I think. Fewer misteaks.