External vs Internal

When I took the position of web editor at my previous job, there had never been a web editor on staff before. I had little supervision, no mentoring, and limited experience. Saying I had to “wing it” is a bit of an understatement. One thing that came up all of the time when adding content on our CMS was whether a link should open in the original window or a new one. The intuitive answer is, of course, a new one. Why would you send users away from your site? So, each time I added content, I ticked the box or wrote the HTML code that would signal the link to launch in a new window.

It wasn’t until Sarah mentioned in class last week that this was a mistake that I started to ponder the pros andcons of internal and external links. And then this week’s reading 18: HTML Links – Let’s Build a Web! really hit home by putting external links in the context of frames and pop-ups. (The rest of the tutorial is worth checking out, too.) And there are good discussions on the topic on ProBlogger and SEOBook

I’ve also been working on a blog on the New York Times coverage of this whole swine flu thing, and I’ve noticed that it is near impossible to find a link on nytimes.com that points to a non-NYT page. Annoying.

You’ll notice that for the first time in this blog the links open in the main window.