 A big THANK YOU! to MCE128 Maunger and Bryan who helped me in my never ending link research via the odditorium and for whom none of my questions was too stupid not to be answered patiently! Here are the links to their portfolios: Maunger Bryan MCE128 |
| Home | Gallery | Contact |
***IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: All information on this site is used on your own risk! This site is friendly towards Lucky Oliver and the site owner is a contributor to Lucky Oliver but by NO means does this site REPRESENTS Lucky Oliver! *** Linking for Olivers and Carnies! - Tips&Tricks To
make your own
links you
have to replace my referral nick
“hospitalera” for
yours, if not I’ll get all the buckies (not that I would mind
;-)
One
easy
method is copy and paste the text of this page into a text editor like
Word, run
edit>replace "hospitalera" for "YourName" and save again ;-) And
voila, you have your very own resource of ready made referral links.
Basics-the parts of a link http://www.luckyoliver.com
- The web site you are linking to, that can be something simple like
the Lucky Oliver home page or something really sophisticated like a
search result: http://www.luckyoliver.com/search/business+woman
Making
links: text links, pretty and ugly url's and -tiny
urls/?loaf=hospitalera - This suffix makes out of a simple link a referral link, it basically "tells" LuckyOliver that I have send the person that just clicked this link. Never change your referral suffix, if you do so, Lucky Oliver doesn't recognize you any more! But you can add /?loaf=hospitalera at the end of every url you want people to send to, example: http://www.luckyoliver.com/search/business+woman/?loaf=hospitalera This link http://www.luckyoliver.com/?loaf=hospitalera sends the person that clicks on it to the Lucky Oliver home page. Try out how the landing page changes when you click the link whilst you're signed into Lucky Oliver and when your signed out. Here a list of more text links for you to copy and paste (don't forget to change hospitalera for your nick name!): Sends people to your profile page: http://www.luckyoliver.com/profile/hospitalera/?loaf=hospitalera Sends people to your portfolio: http://www.luckyoliver.com/portfolio/hospitalera/?loaf=hospitalera Sends people to your side show images only: http://www.luckyoliver.com/portfolio/hospitalera?sideshow=only/?loaf=hospitalera Send people to a specific image: http://www.luckyoliver.com/photo/1083015/pamp_cloister/?loaf=hospitalera You can "harvest" urls you want people to direct to by copying them directly from the address bar of your browser and then adding your referral suffix to them ;-) More
Basics-bbcode or htlm? Huch!
BBCode
is an abbreviation for Bulletin Board Code, means it is the "language"
we use in the odditorium and other forums to add style to our text and
to add images and to format links.
HTML,
is used in web desig, means when you make your own page, in
emails and
where ever else you are allowed to use html code. I cover here both
kind of links and you will see quickly the differences and
similarities. Just see them as two different languages and the
different locations where you are able to post links as countries, in
some countries you have to speak bbcode, whilst in other contries you
have to speak html. Just listen what the locals speak!
Now as you know how
to
construct a referral link you need to know also how to make a clickable
link! Text links are the simplest form of links if sometimes a little
ugly but there are some
methods to make them look a lot better ;-) The most basic text link is
made by putting the address of a web page+your referral suffix between
[url][/url] tags. I can't go into detail for every version
forums/emails/comment
fields on web pages etc. you might be using, but basically you have to
look out for something that says
"add link" or "bbcode allowed" etc. Try and error will help you!
[url]http://www.luckyoliver.com/?loaf=hospitalera[/url] gives http://www.luckyoliver.com/?loaf=hospitalera = pretty ugly link! [url= http://www.luckyoliver.com/?loaf=hospitalera]LuckyOliver rocks![/url] gives LuckyOliver rocks!= pretty pretty link! So the trick is to use this form [url=referral link]Text you want to show[/url] and for variety you can try changing letters and color! [url=http://www.luckyoliver.com/?loaf=hospitalera][color=green]LUCKY OLIVER ROCKS![/color][/url] gives LUCKY OLIVER ROCKS!= pretty personalised link! Other tags you can use, always around the text you want to display, are [i][/i] for italic and [b][/b] for bold text. Just start to play around until you get a feeling for things... And remember every [tag] needs a [/tag]. Oops, forgot to mention, tags are these thingies in square brackets called that tell a browser how to tread a text, for example to display text as a link... Tiny Urls - Great Treasures
Sometimes you're running out of space, for example when you're only
allowed a certain amount of caracters in your forum signature or you
simply want to disguise the fact that the link contains a referral
link. In this case tinyurl is a nifty-swifty
solution! Basically this free web site converts your long link into a
short
one that additionally disguises the fact that this link might contain
referral information! Pretty practical in cases where you don't want to
tell that it is a referral link or you want to disguise your id. But
why would you want to do the later, aren't you proud of being an
oliver/ carnie?
You can try tinyurl
with the
following box, just put in the url you want to shorten,
including your referral bit!, and hit
submit, a new window with the result and additional information will
open. Only possible draw back for tinyurl, for me, would be that IF
the site goes down one day for good then all your links would be
broken, means no longer working. Your risk! Here the box for
you to tryUsing images/ banners in bbcode is described a little bit more down in this article, now we come first to HTML - That is were the real
fun starts!
HTML
code is the most powerful
and versatile way of making links, but it is restricted to
occasions where you can access the html code directly or at least enter html custom code via a menu. The ultimate resource to html tags you can
find at http://www.w3schools.com/tags/ I
can here only cover the most
basic uses of html for referral links!
Finally - Now
it is
all about images!So the most basic html link would be something like this: <a href="http://www.luckyoliver.com/?loaf=hospitalera">Stock photos for a buck!</a> gives Stock photos for a buck! <a href="http://www.luckyoliver.com/?loaf=hospitalera"><b>Stock photos for a buck!</b></a> gives Stock photos for a buck! <a href="http://www.luckyoliver.com/?loaf=hospitalera"><b><font color="red">Stock photos for a buck! </font></b></a> gives Stock photos for a buck! Now you can start to play! Remember every <tag> needs its </tag>! As in bbcode you can put every url you wish to link to in the first part of the link and then comes the text you wish to display. To make that links open automatically in a new window just add target="_blank" like in this example: <a href="http://www.luckyoliver.com/?loaf=hospitalera" target="_blank">Lucky Oliver Rocks!</a> try it out Lucky Oliver Rocks! There are many more things what you can do with html code, I really recommend http://www.w3schools.com as a first class and easy understandable ressource! Now we come to displaying
images as links with bbcode and html, the principle is the same, let's
start with the easiest one - hot linking! Hot linking is the placing of
a linked object in this case an image, from one site into a web page
belonging to a second site. Means you display an image on your site
without the necessity to actually host it. Just with a simple click and
paste! Lucky Oliver encourages hot linking actively because it provides
a link back to their own site. These images are water marked and carry
a copyright notice and are basically little advertisements for the
originating site.
Advantages: As you don't have to host the images there is no hassle with uploading and storing them, great if your storage capacity is limited. Also you are spoiled with choice as the whole database of Lucky Olivers high quality images is at your disposition. Disadvantages: Hot linked images show only up when the originating site is on line. If the originating site goes down for what ever reason no images will be displayed on your site. The same happens if the link location changes. Then you get images displayed you haven't asked for ;-) And the images are rather big but I’ll show you later a nifty trick to re-size them to something more manageable. And as you were a goodie and read up to here I tell you a little secret: Each of these images is also serving as a referral link, means if somebody clicks on it and becomes a customer of Lucky Oliver you’ll earn some extra cash. This is a summary from one of my web sites: The Free Image Guide How to do it: Choose an image (pretty obvious, sorry), if it one of yours make sure that you're on the "public" image page, not the one you use for editing them. On the right hand side you see four fields with code: The first one gives you simply the url, example: http://www.luckyoliver.com/photo/1083015/pamp_cloister?loaf=hospitalera, of the image in question. That is the same url that you see in the address bar of your browser+your referral ID already added. This kind of link can be used as it is, in emails or messengers, or can be the base to your own link creations! The second gives you the html code, example: <a href="http://www.luckyoliver.com/photo/1083015/pamp_cloister?loaf=hospitalera"><img src="http://www.luckyoliver.com/photos/derived//LO-pamp_cloister-1083015.jpg" alt="LuckyOliver: Pamp Cloister" title="LuckyOliver: Pamp Cloister" style="border: 0"/></a> will display as:  Now that might be a little bit overwhelming in size, so lets try to change some code: If we use: <a href="http://www.luckyoliver.com/photo/1083015/pamp_cloister?loaf=hospitalera"><img src="http://www.luckyoliver.com/photos/derived//LO-pamp_cloister-1083015.jpg" alt="LuckyOliver: Pamp Cloister" title="LuckyOliver: Pamp Cloister" style="border: 0" width="150" height="126"/></a> then things look
definitely better ;-) Note the part of the code in bold? That is what
you have to add to the original code to change the image size and the
numbers in " " define the image
size in pixel. And if we now add target="_blank" to the code we get an image in the size we want to have it, that serves as a referral link and opens in a new window! <a href="http://www.luckyoliver.com/photo/1083015/pamp_cloister?loaf=hospitalera"target="_blank"><img src="http://www.luckyoliver.com/photos/derived//LO-pamp_cloister-1083015.jpg" alt="LuckyOliver: Pamp Cloister" title="LuckyOliver: Pamp Cloister" style="border: 0" width="150" height="126" /></a> Now let's have a look at the third code provided: [url=http://tinyurl.com/35bkw7][img]http://www.luckyoliver.com/photos/derived//LO-pamp_cloister-1083015.jpg[/img][/url] Note that I have used a tinyurl in the example above to shorten the monster link a bit! That's bbcode again, so if you would copy and paste it in a forum for example it would show up like this: Unfortunately you can't re-size the images in bbcode which means it is either big or nada ;-( Be careful that they don't call you a show-off when you post your bestseller at LuckyOliver at your neighboorhood forum in this size! Using Lucky Olivers Banners, adapting them or using your own ones? Lucky Oliver is so
kind to
give us a wide selcetion of cute banners to choose from, so lets have a
look what we do with them! Easiest of all, we just copy and paste the
code into our web site and are done.
One last
word - Cookies!<a
href="http://www.luckyoliver.com/?loaf=hospitalera"><img
src="http://www.luckyoliver.com/images/affiliates/feelinglucky.gif"
width="125" height="125" border="0" alt="stock photos, royalty free
stock photography, photo search" /></a> becomes
 As by now we are all experts in "beautifying" links and adapting them to our needs we can change the code to <a href="http://www.luckyoliver.com/?loaf=hospitalera"target="_blank"><img src="http://www.luckyoliver.com/images/affiliates/feelinglucky.gif" width="100" height="100" border="0" "target="_blank" alt="stock photos, royalty free stock photography, photo search /></a> to get a slightly smaller banner that opens in a new window: You see image links are not so different from text links! All the ready made Lucky Oliver banners you can find HERE If you want to create your own banners, the steps would be like this: 1. Create the image that shall become your banner with your preferred image software either in .gif or in .jpg format. Pay attention that it is as light as possible means the less kb the the file has the better as it loads faster. 2.Upload this image somewhere on the internet. If you don't have a own web site you can use  to host
your image.3. Make your referral link following the following schemes, replacing my nick with yours and personalizing which page on Lucky Oliver you want people to go to: For BBCode: [url=http://www.luckyoliver.com/?loaf=hospitalera][img]http://www.url-where-your-image-is-hosted[/img][/url] For HTML: <a href="http://www.luckyoliver.com/?loaf=hospitalera"><img src="http://www.url-where-your-image-is-hosted" border="0" /></a> OK, I kept the bad
message
for the end,
all these nice referral links work only if the person clicking them has
cookies enabled in their computer. If cookies, the little thingie that
tells Lucky Oliver "Hey! Attention! This one has already visited and
came recommended by xyz!" are disabled you -and Lucky Oliver!- can make
nada, niente, nietschewo. It simply is as if this person would have
clicked a simple link without any referral code. What can you
do
about it? Nothing! But at least you have send one potential customer
more to Lucky Oliver and that means one potential buyer more for our
images. But the good message is most people have cookies
enabled in their browsers ;-)
Really Last Words...
Thank you
for bearing with me
so far... I hope you enjoyed this travel into the weird and wonderful
world of referral links and I could help you a little bit further on
your way ;-) All images, texts, banners, lay-out, basically the whole
content of this web site are copyrighted either by me or by Lucky
Oliver. Please don't use them as they are, instead link to them using
one of
the following codes:
BBCode: [url=http://www.sybilleyates.com/Linking for Olivers and Carnies!.html]Linking for Olivers and Carnies![/url] HTML: <a href="http://www.sybilleyates.com/Linking for Olivers and Carnies!.html">Linking for Olivers and Carnies!</a> or just use the url http://www.sybilleyates.com/Linking for Olivers and Carnies!.html to make your own personalised link back to this page! If you have further questions and/ or suggestions don't hesitate to drop me an email at sybilleyates {at} sybilleyates dot com. Just convert this gibberish in an email address like the internets demands, I don't like any robots that collect my email address and send me spam - already have enough of it! See you soon at Lucky Oliver, SY (hospitalera) 
|