In this Artopium Library article I will be explaining what a URL is and how to use it to create links to promote your Creative Works. Links are the most important and fundamental part of how the Internet works, and the knowledge to create a link can not only give you a better understanding of the Internet, but also give you the capacity to effectively promote your work online. This article was written for those who have a novice to intermediate knowledge of the Internet and HTML and is focused primarily for the use by artists, musicians, fashion designers, filmmakers and authors who are already members of Artopium.com. In any case, this article contains crucial information on promoting your Creative Works online as well as how to use your Artopium Profile URL.

Artopium provides artists, musicians, fashion designers, filmmakers, and authors free hosting of multimedia files (mp3s, images, movie clips) along with the ability to accept credit cards online for purchases of their Creative Works. Sign up now to create your Artopium profile page for free and start accepting credit cards for your work, or read more about the benefits of joining Artopium.

Uniform Resource Locator

A URL (Uniform Resource Locator) is, in essence, an address that points to data on the Internet. It works very similar in idea to a real street address, but instead of pointing you to someone's home or the local pub, it points to a file located on the Internet somewhere. It's "Uniform" because it works the same across the many different types of computers that may be using it. You can see a URL right now (the one that points to this page) by looking in the address bar of the browser you're using. Your address bar is the long, thin, horizontal, text box with the long string of text starting with "http://".

Hyper Text

All URLs that point to web pages start with the text "http://". Even if you type a web address "www.website.com" into your browser's address box without the "http://", most browsers will automatically insert it before retrieving the page requested from that site: "http://www.website.com".

HTTP stands for Hyper-Text Transfer Protocol, which is the standard way of saying "this information is going to be Hyper-Text". Hyper-Text is text that is marked up in such a way that it not only serves as readable text but as a clickable link as well. The idea of "marking up" text (and images and other objects) with special code to make it clickable is the very foundation of the Internet. The code that is used to "mark up" text or images is called HTML, or Hyper-Text Markup Language (simple).

Client vs. Server

To get a deeper understanding of where your URL is actually pointing to it is helpful to understand the terms "client" and "server" and how they relate to eachother to create what is commonly referred to as the "Web". A client computer is primarily used to retrieve data from the Internet. Almost all home and office computers that are used to browse or "surf" the Internet are client computers. Server computers are commonly owned and operated by "Web Hosting" companies and are used to store the contents of a website (HTML pages, images, etc.). A client computer requests information from a server computer by using a URL to point to the file it wants from that server.

Static vs. Dynamic

As the names imply, a static web page is one that never changes and a dynamic web page is one that contains variable information. An example of a static web page is the one you are reading right now. Everytime you come to this page it will always look and read the same and it does not depend upon any external source of information. On the other hand, an example of a dynamic web page would be one designed for, say, stock quotes or the latest basketball scores. Depending on what has happened in the stock market or what games have been played recently, these pages will contain different and more up to date information each time you visit them.

A key indicator that a page you are visiting is either static or dynamic is the use of the question mark in the URL. If you look in the address bar of your browser and see that the URL has a question mark after the address and before a long string of text, you are visiting a dynamic page. Here's an example of a URL that points to a dynamic web page:

http://www.artopium.com/space/search.cgi?action=artistscreen&fromsearchpage=&item=G3312&user=938

This is the dynamic URL generated by the Artopium search script and points to my personal Artopium Profile page for my band "Lost In Austn" (shameless plug, I know). Artopium provides a much simpler-to-use and (for very important reasons, a much better-to-use) URL that points to a static version of your Artopium Profile page. Search engines do not like dynamic web pages and will not index them (information they index today could change tomorrow), so to effectively promote your work it is imperative that you use the static URL provided to you in your Artopium Member Area (a.k.a. My Artopium). The URL below is the static URL that points to my profile page for my band Lost In Austin. Both URLs point to a page that is exactly the same in content, but are located and retrieved in two completely different locations.

http://www.artopium.com/Lost In Austin

HTTP is always followed by a colon : and two "forward" slashes / / before the rest of the address. The colon and slashes are an indicator to the computer that the protocol has been declared (the Hyper-Text Transfer Protocol in this case) and that everything after the last slash is the actual address. If this is mispelled or left out it can create problems and errors in the link. The computer requesting the information must first determine what type of information it's retrieving (so it can know how to display it for you) before it can actually retrieve the data. Since there are several other types of protocols the computer must consider (FTP, GOPHER, HTTPS, etc.), a mispelled or missing protocol declaration in your URL can slow down the speed of the retrieval of the requested information or cause errors. When creating a link using your Artopium Profile URL it is always important that this is spelled correctly and not repeated (http://http://www.website.com) as can often happen when pasting your URL into a text box.

The rest of the URL is the address (or sometimes referred to as "pathway") to the file that is being requested. The beginning of the address is always the domain (www.domain-name.com), followed by the folder path to the file ( / folder_name / another_folder / file_name . htm). The forward slashes seperate folders that are within other folders so that the last folder named is the inner-most folder in the path and the folder that contains the file the URL points to..

In the example above I use spaces to accentuate and clarify the spellling, however spaces are not allowed in any part of a URL and should be replaced with the special characters %20. Browsers will usually do this for you automatically, but if you are creating an HTML link (read more below) it is important to replace any spaces that are in the URL with the characters %20, which the server will then interpret as a space.

For example:

http://www.artopium.com/Lost In Austin

This URL can be typed into a browser address bar and it will work just fine. However, if you are creating an HTML link or submitting your URL to a search engine it should be written as:

http://www.artopium.com/Lost%20In%20Austin

Sometimes the file name and last forward slash are left off the end of a URL (such as above), but this is only allowed in cases where the file name the URL is pointing to is "index". For example, when you type in the URL

"http://www.artopium.com/Lost In Austin"

the browser is actually interpreting this as

"http://www.artopium.com/Lost%20In%20Austin/index.htm"

and only works because there is actually a file named "index.htm" in the folder that is named "Lost In Austin".

NOTE TO MEMBERS: When you sign up to Artopium to create an Artist Member account, this folder and index file are created automatically for you, but you will need to view your profile page at least once in order to create it for the first time, otherwise your static URL will deliver a 404 Page Not Found error.

To make a link you must first understand that there are many ways to do this. They range from creating a website, to joining a forum, to submitting your URL to the thousnads of search engines and directories. THERE ARE MANY PLACES TO PUT YOUR URL, but depending on where you make your link you will need to how to make it using one of several different methods.

Creating Web Pages

Links that are made using HTML can only be placed onto web pages that are stored on a server computer or "Web Host". There are many ways to create a web page (or a whole site containing many pages) ranging from paid web hosting services for large, professional sites (requires building a site from scratch) to free services for smaller, personal sites (some hosts have automated scripting to help create your web pages, such as Artopium).

As I explain in my article "How to Promote Creative Works of Art, Music & Literature on the Internet", the most effective approach to promoting your work is to have an "Official Home Page" that exists on a paid server with a paid domain name. Along with you main site you should have several "door-way" pages that are created on certain, key web hosting servers. These door-way pages will contain a link to your home page and a link to a page where your work can be purchased. Be sure to check out the Artopium Library page "Best List of Free Web Hosts for Artists & Musicians" for the hosts that are crucial to promoting your artistic works online. I recommend that you only use these hosting services as by using other less popular services you may run into either technical problems or customer service issues (as I have with many out there!). Also, by creating too many door-way pages (especially on less popular servers), you can get your site banned from the search engines altogether as these pages might be interpreted by them as affiliate pages. AND YOU NEVER WANT TO GET BANNED BY THE SEARCH ENGINES!!!

Artopium is a resource that can be used for any or all of these types of pages. Because all the information that a potential customer may want to know about your work is provided in one place along with a distinct yellow button that says "Buy Now", your Artopium Profile page can be a home page, a door-way page and/or shopping cart page capable of accepting major credit cards.

Making a Link Using HTML

As I explained above, HTML is a mark up language. In HTML, code that is used to mark up text or an image is called a "Tag". There is a "starting" tag and an "ending" tag that is placed at the beginning and end of some text in order to mark it up. For instance, if I wanted to mark up the text "Have A Nice Day", it would look something like this:

<TAG> Have A Nice Day </TAG>

The code "<TAG>" before the text is the starting tag. The code "</TAG>" at the end of the text is the ending tag and is just like the starting tag with the additional forward slash / before the tag name. All HTML tags are spelled using the less-than < , greater-than > signs with the tag name and properties in between them. The name of the tag in HTML that creates a link is called the "Anchor Tag" and looks like this:


<a href=" URL "> TEXT </a>


The tag name is the letter "a" for "anchor" and it is in both the starting and ending tags. However, the ending tag always has the forward slash before the "a" (</a>) so that browsers don't confuse it for a starting tag. Inside the starting tag is the href property which points to the URL the browser will take you to when a someone clicks on the TEXT. Any text between the the anchor tags will appear as a blue, underlined link and will be clickable. The URL that the href property equals (=) should should always be in quotes when possible, but if not the quotes can be left off. Here is an example of an HTML link that points to my Artopium profile page:


<a href=" http://www.artopium.com/Lost%20In%20Austin "> Purchase My CD! </a>

Creates a link like this: Purchase My CD!


This is all you really need to know to begin creating links in many places on the internet. A lot of art/music forums and blogs allow you to submit HTML coded links in your messages and posts. Myspace.com is a great place to begin placing HTML links as no HTML knowledge is necessary to create a Myspace page, but every facet of Myspace (messages, comments, bulletins, etc.) allows you to insert HTML links.

For a quick and easy way to create HTML links to either your Artopium Profile page or the Artopium home page please visit the Artopium Link Generator.


Submitting Your URL to the Search Engines & Internet Directories


THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING YOU CAN DO WITH YOUR ARTOPIUM PROFILE URL!!! When placing your URL into the search engines and directories it is not necessary to use any HTML, just the URL itself. However, when submitting your URL to the directories, there are many rules you will need to follow for your URL to be accepted and listed as a link. Although this task can seem arduous at first, it is very important as getting a link into some of these directories can mean substantially more traffic to your pages!

Please visit Artopium's "Complete List of Search Engines & Internet Directories" for a list of links directly to the URL submission pages for these sites. IT IS VERY IMPORTANT THAT YOU FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS OUTLINED ON EACH SITE AS NOT DOING SO CAN GET YOUR URL REJECTED AND EVEN BANNED!