Across every webpage that has a significant amount of alphabetic text, you should be weblinking/hyperlinking key sentences and key words.  When you weblink, a sentence or keyword becomes hyperlinked--- this means that you can click there and you will be taken to another source website.  That is called an EXTERNAL hyperlink. You can and should even weblink your own ePortfolio webpages when you are referencing an issue/argument that you have already made on another page of your site.  You can consider that an INTERNAL weblink.

Use a weblink to give your audience more information about a topic and show the intellectual/digital spaces that you connect with.  This gives your work and your entire site more crdibility.

Choose your links very carefully.  Remember that any time a reader of your site clicks that link, they can track the weblinking back to your own website.  In other words, they will KNOW who you are and visit you also. Make sure you are representing other sites accurately as you are making a PUBLIC stance with your words and work.  Remember that you are also driving more traffic to your own site and creating a critical part of your digital toolkit.

Notice that many sentences, phrases, and words on the webpage have underlining (see above).  When you click any of these items, you are taken to a website that gives more information or confirms my statement.  Listing a URL--- as in simply writing out https://johnjay.digication.com---- is NOT weblinking. Here are some other guidelines for your weblinking:

1. Do NOT weblink to wikipedia or dictionary/about.com websites.  Yes, these are valid sources of information but they are very EASY to find. You do not need to help audiences find wikipedia.  More importantly, it looks as if you have never read farther or scrolled past the first google hit when you did a search of your topic/issue if all that you can link is wikipedia, etc.
2. Make sure that your politics are in sync with the site you are linking.  You are linked now--- make sure you want to to be!
3. Keep your traffic at your site so allow your weblinks to open to a new page rather than being redirected away from your own page.
4. Vary between weblinking words, entire sentences, and phrases.
5. Use at least two weblinks for every 500-600 words.

1) First, find the website that you want to link with.  Copy that URL and be ready to paste it soon. 

2) Highlight the sentence, phrase, or word that you will weblink.  Use your mouse and highlight the sentence the way you would in any other wordprocessing format.

3) Click the LINK icon in the toolbar above (it is circled in red below so that you know which icon you will need).

4) If you have selected the right icon on the toolbar above, then a small screen will pop up that looks like this (if this small screen does not pop up, go back to #3 because you have done something incorrectly).

Please also note here: This platform and weblinking works best on chrome.  If you are at home, consider downloading chrome to your machine.  It's free.  If you are on campus, switch to chrome ASAP.

5) Paste in your URL that you want to link (it must include the HTTP part) into the line that says URL LINK.

6) Make sure that you click OPEN LINK IN A NEW WINDOW in the TARGET box.  You just need to toggle that.

7) You are DONE!