Introduction to Links on omidyar.net

In omidyar.net, there are two types of hyperlinks:

1. Internal links: links to pages in a group's workspace. These are generally the easiest links to make.
2. External links: links to anything EXCEPT a group's workspace. External links are used to link to anything with a URL.

For both internal and external links, the words to be linked are surrounded by backticks, the symbol that shares the same key as the tilda (~) on US keyboards.

External links consist of two parts: the text that will be hyperlinked and the footnote that tells the link where to go.

The footnote part of external links ALWAYS starts with two periods, a space and an underscore ( .. _ ) to signify that the footnote contains an URL for a hyperlink.

Internal Links (within a single Group)

Internal links are links to pages in a group's workspace. For example, typing this:

Here is a link to the `Index`_ page.

will link directly to the Index page in this group, like this:

Here is a link to the Index page.

What's the trick? Nothing more than surrounding the page name with backticks and placing an underscore at the end. The link is automatically created. Better yet, if you're referring to a workspace that doesn't yet exist, the hyperlink that underlines the word will be broken like this telling you that the page doesn't exist.

(If you click on a dashed link like this, you'll have the opportunity to create a workspace of that name)

Internal Inter-Group Links (between two omidyar.net groups)

To create an inter-group link (a link to a workspace that's in another group than the one you're editing) requires only a tiny extra piece of punctuation to make work.

All you have to do is put the group shortname (the name that appears immediately to the right of /group/ in a page's URL) in front of the workspace name you want to link to, surround the whole thing with backticks and slap an underscore on the end.

So I can refer to the People workspace in the Community-General group like this:

• From the URL of the workspace (http://www.omidyar.net/group/com munity-general/ws/People/) I can see the group's shortname is "community-general" (it's what appears just to the right of /group/).
• The workspace I want to link to is called "People"
• So the link I create looks like this: `/community-general/People`_ and becomes this: /community-general/People

If you want to link to anything BUT a workspace, you have to use the standard External Links punctuation in the next section...

External Links Overview (link to anything!)

http://www.omidyar.net/home

Here is a link to `my home page`_. Please come and visit.

.. _`my home page`: http://www.omidyar.net/

Detailed Instructions for External Links

To convert a piece of text you've typed into a hyperlink, do the following:

• Enclose the text in backticks, like this: `my home page`
• Add an underscore _ character immediately after the right backtick, with no spaces: `my home page`_
• At the end of your text, add a blank line, then a new line that begins exactly with two periods, a space, and an underscore, like this: .. _
• Immediately after that underscore, type exactly the same text you are turning into a hyperlink, enclosed in backticks, like this: .. _`my home page` (This completes the "link" between the text in the body of your document, and the footnote which will refer to the actual URL.)
• Then, type a colon followed by the URL, so you get this:

.. _`my home page`: http://www.omidyar.net/

• Your complete text will now look something like this:

I invite you all to visit my home page, which contains all sorts of highly interesting information.

• If you have more hyperlinks, just repeat this process. You can list all your hyperlinks (with their dot-dot-space-etc-URLs) at the bottom of your posting, like this:

  I invite you all to visit `my home page`_, which contains all sorts of highly interesting information.
  In case that information is of little interest to you, please go to Google_ and see what you can find there.
  
  .. _`my home page`: http://www.omidyar.net/
  .. _Google: http://www.google.com/
  

Rendering the completed text looking like this:

I invite you all to visit my home page, which contains all sorts of highly interesting information. In case that information is of little interest to you, please go to Google and see what you can find there.

This last example also demonstrates a shortcut for single-word hyperlinks: you can omit the backquotes, but everything else remains the same.