Hyperlink+Best+Practices.doc
- Catherine Foss (Unlicensed)
- Thomas Rose-Bolden
External Links/Resources
On cda.org all external hyperlinks should still open in a new window.
Do not host PDFs on our website that are not ours. Link to the PDF from the original website.
Per accessibility best practices it is recommended to warn the reader when they will be leaving our site to go to a different site (through how the content is written).
Internal (same website) links
Use relative links, not absolute links, when linking to a page inside of cda.org. Most components/modules will allow you to use a page picker to directly select the page rather than copy/pasting a URL.
Correct: /Home/About/CDA-Foundation
More info here: https://www.pipeten.com/support/scripting/what-is-the-difference-between-a-relative-and-absolute-urls/
Linking to Files/Documents
Upload files through the site assets page and generate a link rather than uploading a document directly through a 2sxc component.
When replacing a file with an updated version, please make sure that you are actually replacing the file and not just adding a duplicate copy with a different name/date.
Copying links from Outlook
As part of the Office 365 Advance Threat Prevention that IT has implemented, links in emails are now checked by a SafeLinks service. Meaning, when you click on a link from Outlook, the service verifies that the link has neither been blocked by CDA nor determined to be malicious. To perform this check, Outlook rewrites the links into some form of https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=
Issue: The rewritten URL from Outlook obscures the destination of the original URL, which is problematic if a user is copying and pasting links from emails into another document or web content. When copying and pasting, instead of pasting the original URL, the long, rewritten SafeLink link will be pasted/inserted.
Solution #1: Use a utility that decodes the URL, such as http://www.o365atp.com/
In the email message, right click on the link and select Copy Hyperlink.
Go to http://www.o365atp.com/
Paste the link into the top box.
The original URL will then be displayed in the Decoded URL box.
Solution #2: Open the link in your browser and then copy/paste the URL from the page itself
Troubleshooting Broken Links
Direct way: view the page source.
Right-click the page and select “view page source”
2. Click “ctrl-F5” and paste the URL of the link you are looking for. For example, if I am looking for: /member-resources/education/cures-webinar (note that since this is a link on our site I pasted in the relative link instead of the absolute link).
3. The text right after the link is the display text on the page, so in this case I would need to tell the developers to replace the term “CURES CDA Webinar” with a different link.
Indirect: Use a browser extension
Add a Chrome browser plugin tool such as https://error404.atomseo.com/ to scan the whole page.
From your page where broken links have been indicated, click the icon in the toolbar on your Chrome browser window.
2. Look for any links highlighted (usually with “404”)