Lesson video

Hello, everyone.

It's Mrs. Ranson here.

Welcome to Computing.

It's really good to have you in my lesson today.

Let's get started.

The outcome for today's lesson is I can add external hyperlinks to a webpage whilst considering the implications of doing so.

Let's look at our keywords for today.

The first keyword is implication.

An implication is a likely consequence of something.

The next keyword is external link.

An external link is a link to someone else's website.

Our last keyword is embedded content.

Embedded content is content directly integrated from another source into your webpage.

In the first part of the lesson, you are going to explain the problems of linking to external websites.

Is it okay to link to content made by others? Pause the video and have a think about this.

If you've got someone near you, you could always share your ideas with them as well.

Okay, let's look at this question.

Is it okay to link content made by others? Jacob said, "I'm not sure.

Would it be against copyright law?" Sofia said, "I think it's okay because you are just linking to the content, not copying it." It is okay to link to content owned by others online because you are not copying the content, just linking to it.

A link to someone else's website is called an external link.

That's one of our keywords.

There are things that you should consider before adding external links.

What do you call a link to someone else's website? Is it A, a hyperlink, B, an external link or C, an online link? Pause the video and have a think about the question.

Let's look at the answer.

What do you call a link to someone else's website? It is B, an external link.

Well done if you got that one right.

You don't have control over where the linked information is stored.

If the owner of the website moves it, your link may no longer work.

Sometimes you will see an error page when this happens, quite often, a 404 error.

The content may also change.

You have no control over the owner of the site changing the information on their webpages.

The website may not be secure.

Some users will be reluctant to click on links if they're not secure.

This might also reflect badly on your site because often, if you're linking to a site, users will see that as you endorsing or recommending that site.

Is the linked site trustworthy? Your website will be pointing users to this site.

Is it a reliable source? You should also give credit to the site you are linking to and make it obvious to your audience that the content is not yours.

Sometimes it is hard to get back to your own website.

This means that if someone clicks on an external link, they may not return to your website.

Okay, it's time for a first task of the lesson.

The first part says, describe what is meant by an external link.

The second part says, explain one implication of linking to content owned by others.

Take your time and try and give really good answers for these.

You can pause the video here to work on that and I'll be here when you get back to go through the answers.

Let's go through the answers together.

For number one, describe what is meant by an external link.

An external link is a link to someone else's website online.

The second one says, explain one implication of linking to content owned by others.

You have no control over the content created by others.

The external content may get updated or change and you may not realise.

The content may also not be trustworthy.

Well done for your effort in this part of the lesson.

In the second part of the lesson, you are going to create an external hyperlink.

Although there are some implications of adding external links, it may still be something that you want to do.

External links can improve the user experience of your website and they can also allow users to find out more about a particular topic.

In order to link to an external website, you need to have the web address.

This is sometimes called the URL.

A URL typically starts with www and can be found in the address bar.

You can copy and paste this address.

We've got an example of a URL at the bottom of the page here.

It is www.

thenational.

academy.

Now it's time to watch the video to see how to add an external link.

This video will show the steps to add a link to an external website to your webpage.

I've got my external website open in a new tab.

Going to open it up and you need to go to the web address and copy that so highlight and then copy and then go back to your webpage.

On your webpage, if you go to the Insert menu on the right, you can scroll down and look for the button.

You can add the name of your website there as text and then in the bottom field, you can paste your link and then click Insert.

There is your button.

You can press the blue handles to resize it.

You've also got some formatting options on the menu to change how your button looks.

The next thing to do is to test out your button so we're going to go to the Preview.

Preview is a view of what your user will see when they go to your website so this is how the website will look for the user.

You could scroll down and find your button and click on it and it should take you to the external website, just like that.

You can navigate back to your webpage and close the preview with the X.

Let's do a check here.

To add an external link, you need.

What do you need? Pause the video here to think about your answer.

Let's look at the answer together.

To add an external link, you need the web address.

This is also called the URL.

Well done if you got that one right.

You may find that adding external links has unwanted implications.

A compromise is to add embedded content.

Embedded content means directly integrating content from another source into your webpage.

There are lots of sites that offer you an embed link to let you add content to your webpages.

It's time to watch the video to see how to embed content into a webpage.

This video will show you the steps to embed external content on your webpage.

We're going to be using the Embed function here.

Let's go up to our new tab which has our embedded content on it.

This is a scratch project and it hasn't been shared so I'm going to press on the Share button.

The content must be public for it to be embedded.

Let's use the Copy Link here and then in the second field, there's a Copy Embed button.

When you click on it, it will automatically copy to your clipboard then you can go back to your webpage.

Let's press on Embed and then in the second option, you're going to paste your HTML code in here and press Next.

Once it's loaded, you can press on Insert and there's your embedded content.

You can use the blue handles to resize it so it fits your webpage better.

The next step is to test it out.

So when you press the Preview here, it will take you to a view that the user will see when they use your website.

Scroll down to find your embedded content and then you can play it to check that it's working correctly.

That is good.

When you're finished, you can close the preview with X at the bottom.

Let's do a check here.

A good alternative to using external links is A, to not add them, B, to add links only to pages within your website or C, to add embedded content? Pause the video here to have a think about your answer.

Let's look at the answer.

A good alternative to using external links is C, to add embedded content.

Okay, it's time for the second task, task B.

The first one says, add some external links to your website.

Then test the links to make sure that they work correctly.

The third one says, try to find some content to embed into your website.

So you're going to get a chance now to work on external links and embedding content as well.

It's your turn now to go and work on improving your website.

You have worked really hard today on your websites.

Let's summarise our learning.

A link that goes to someone else's website and not a page on your own website is called an external link.

Adding external links to your website can have some implications.

For example, the website you're linking to could change or become unavailable and you could then end up with a broken link on your website.

Embedding external content on your website is a good compromise as users will not have to leave your website.

Thank you for joining me in this lesson today and I hope to see you again soon.