Links Page Configuration Help

Edit the Text on the Links Page

You can change the text of any/all of paragraphs on the links page to suit your requirements, and in fact you can add more paragraphs. Be sure to view the finished result to make sure that it works as you intended.

Any text that you enter will automatically be enclosed in justified paragraph tags, so there is no need for you to enter paragraph tags unless you want to enter more than one paragraph of text in a section.

As an alternative to using the editor that we provide, you may also prepare your text and upload the file. If the file follows the rules below then it will be used for the text on your Links page:

1. The file must be called linkstext.txt (lowercase) and be uploaded to your root/links/ directory.
   
   
2. It must be in plain text format, e.g. use notepad.exe
   
   
3. Do not wrap the ends of lines, since an end of line marker will be interpreted as an end of paragraph.
   
   
4. Each line in this file will be enclosed in paragraph tags and will show as one paragraph of justified text on your Links page.
   
   

HTML tags which you may find useful

If you wish you can include most html tags. Below are some examples of html tags you may find useful, though you can also use others. Most tags are used in pairs, an opening tag to indicate the start of some formatting, and a closing tag to indicate the return to standard formatting.

It is actually better to use the style sheet to set style and formatting, but that is more complicated and for minor matters such as highlighting in bold, using the tags below is quite acceptable.

• To make a word or words appear in <B>bold</B> use tags like this.
  
  
• To make a word or words appear in <I>italic</I> use tags like this.
  
  
• Try making text <big>big</big> or
  
  <big><big>bigger</big></big>
  
  or perhaps you prefer <small>small</small> or
  
  <small><small>smaller</small></small>
  
  
• To make words appear in colour use tags like this:
  
  <FONT COLOR="RED">colour</FONT>
  
  
• To include a hyperlink enter a filename and a description like this
  
  <A HREF="filename">Link Description</A>
  
  "filename" could be
  
  
  • just the name e.g. opentimes.html if that file is in the same directory as your page, or
    
    
  • include the directory "docs/filename.html" if it is in your docs subdirectory, or
    
    
  • the full address if it is a link to somewhere else "http://www.myserver.co.uk/subdirectory/filename.html"
    
    
• To include a picture upload the file to your images directory and include a link like this
  
  <IMG SRC="images/filename" alt "description of picture" height = "73" width = "124">
  
  give the full address if the picture file is somewhere else e.g. instead of "images/filename" put "http://www.myserver.co.uk/subdirectory/imagefile.jpg"
  
  

Edit the Links on the Links Page

You may adjust the links on the Links page - you can add, remove, update, or reset all back to GPUK.net provided defaults.

To reset all click the Yes button in this section.

To remove a link, blank that section, or overwrite it.

To update a link, amend the text that is displayed.

To add a new link, enter it either in an empty slot or replace one that you want to remove.

If you do nothing in this section then no changes are made, your links be left unchanged.

Adding a description is not essential and this box may be left blank e.g. if the title is a sufficient description. But you must enter a URL starting www. or else the link will be discarded. You may omit the title (in which case the URL will be displayed) and you may omit the description if you wish.

Titles should be brief, the description box gives you opportunity to explain or describe in greater detail.

As an alternative to using the editor that we provide, you may also prepare your text and upload the file. If the file follows the rules below then it will be used for the links on your Links page:

1. The file must be called url.txt (lowercase) and be uploaded to your root/links/ directory.
   
   
2. It must be in plain text format, e.g. use notepad.exe
   
   
3. Do not wrap the ends of lines, since an end of line marker will be interpreted as an end of paragraph.
   
   
4. Each entry requires three lines:
   
   
   1. Line 1 is the URL e.g. www.gpuk.net
   2. Line 2 is the Title e.g. GPUK Home Page
   3. Line 3 is the Description e.g. This is the service which hosts our website.
      
      
5. If you wish to omit title and/or description then you MUST put a space to reserve the line where they would go. Since this file is read three lines at a time then subsequent links will not work if you omit lines instead of putting spaces.
   
   

If you wish you may include most html tags in the description line.

View the Result

Sometimes when you go to have a look at your newly changed pages it seems that there is no change. Most likely this is because you are looking at an old version of the page in a cache, either on your computer or from your ISP.

1. Try closing down your browser and restarting it, most often this will cause you to fetch the latest version of the page.
   
   
2. Set your browser to load a page every time you visit it, e.g.
   
   
   • In Internet Explorer go to Tools|Internet Options|General|Settings|"Every Visit to the Page".
     
     
   • In Netscape go to Edit|Preferences|Advanced|Cache and set "Document in Cache is compared to document on network" to "Every Time".
     
     
3. Sometimes, particularly with Freeserve, your ISP is caching the page and may give you an old copy. There's not much you can do about this except try again later. Sometimes disconnecting and redialling will connect you to a different cache machine which may work better.