Links & Hyperlinks

What Are External & Internal Links?

A link is a clickable option that allows users to navigate your site. Links can lead to another page, a button, a document, etc.

We use two different types of links:

Internal links
External links

External links

External links are links to things that are not on your site. For example, say you are working on the School of Medicine domain and want to link to something on health care. Because they are two different sites, you would treat it as an external link.

Internal links

Internal links link to content that is part of your site. For example, you can link to a cardiology page from a sports medicine page on the health care domain because they are part of the same site.

Rules & Helpful Tips

Never paste a full url when linking. It is against our brand and style guide.
- Example of what NOT to do—https://healthcare.utah.edu/patient-family-services/where-to-stay
Be clear and direct in what you are linking to. Avoid language like 'click here' when making your links.
- Example— 'Learn more about high blood pressure treatment' instead of 'click here to learn about high blood pressure treatment.'

Links & Accessibility

Current WCAG guidelines discourage the use of opening a link in a new tab. Opening a link in a new tab can be disorienting for individuals with low vision. WCAG says there are two situations in which opening a link in a new tab is ok:

Opening a link in the same tab would interrupt a multi-step workflow (ex: filling out paperwork or a form).
The user is logged into a secured site and opening a link in the same tab would remove them from the secured site.

Read WCAG's guidelines on links.

Avoiding Broken Links

The best way to avoid broken links is to follow the guidelines outlined below. Correctly linked internal links will update automatically if their url path changes.

How to Create an Internal Link

Step 1, Navigate to where you want to put the link

Go into 'edit' mode on your page.
Click the component you want to add a link to. This is most commonly a text or button component.
Highlight the text you want to create a link for.

Highlight the text you want to hyperlink

Step 2, Click the link icon

If working in a text component, click the link icon in the tool bar.
If working with a different component like a button, find the box that says 'link url.'

Step 3, Insert the link

Type in the name of the page you want to link to in the 'link url' box.
Select the page.
Click 'insert.'

Type the page name in the url box to link to the page

Tip

Content is sorted by content type. (Basic page, location, podcast, etc.) Make sure you select the correct one for your link.

Content is sorted by content types in Drupal

Nodes

What Are Nodes?

Every page has a node assigned to it. When you have created an internal link, you will see something like this: /node/1234.

Nodes follow their assigned URL even if that URL changes. This helps prevent broken links. This is why you should always type in a page name rather than paste a URL in the URL box. Pasting a URL does not guarantee the link will work if the URL changes.

Tip

You can find the node of a page by looking for it in the URL:

Go into edit on the page you want to know the node for.
The node is in the URL. You should see something like: /node/1234/edit

You can find a page's node in the url path

How to Create an External Link

External links are links that are not part of the domain you are working on. There are several reasons why you may want an external link on your page:

Links to relevant content like the CDC, news, or other information
Links between different U of U domains

How to External Link

Follow all the steps you would do to make an internal link with one exception.
Instead of typing in the page name in the link box, copy and paste the URL path of the page you want to link to.
Click insert.