How to Add Links, Page References and Footnotes

1058 February 9, 2023

Print My Blog Pro simplifies adding links, page references, and footnotes to your documents and website. Just add hyperlinks using WordPress’ editor (as normal) to your posts and other content, and your design will take care of converting them to page references, footnotes, leaving them as hyperlinks or removing them, as dictated by your design.

A hyperlink
A page reference
A footnote

To link to another website, files on your website, or pretty well anything online, just:

  1. Select the text that you want to be hyperlinked
  2. click the linking button
  3. enter the URL (it’s usually easiest to visit the page in another browser tab, and then copy-and-paste its URL from the address bar)
  4. press enter
The link button in WordPress’ Block Editor (a.k.a Gutenberg)
Once clicked, the hyperlink opens up a box saying “Search or type url”

By the way, it’s usually best to not add “click here” to the link text. That has always been redundant because hyperlinks are always highlighted blue with an underscore online; plus it’s especially strange when reading from a book. Instead, just highlight a few words that relate to the linked-to content.

WordPress makes linking to other posts, pages, and custom post types on your site easier.

  1. Select the text that you want to be hyperlinked
  2. click the linking button
  3. enter a word or two from the post’s title or body. WordPress will search for it and bring up a list of matching posts, pages, and custom post types
  4. click the post or item you want to link to
  5. press enter

Links to Specific Parts of a Post

In other programs this is referred to as “bookmarks” or “anchors”. These are links to specific images, subheadings, or other parts of the project. Support for these was added in PMB 3.1.4. Use them as you would normally on your website, and PMB will turn them into working anchor links.

  • First, add the anchor to your post: in WordPress’ block editor, select the block you want to link to (eg the image, heading, or anything)
  • in the block’s settings on the right, scroll down to Advanced and expand it
  • enter the “HTML Anchor” for anything that makes sense to you. Your readers probably won’t see it. Eg screenshot-of-homepage or graph-of-sales PMB will work best when that anchor is unique throughout the entire project, so try to not reuse anchor names in different posts.
  • now, add a link to that anchor: select the text you want to become the link
  • click the link icon (kinda looks like a chain link)
  • enter a pound sign then the anchor’s name you used earlier. Eg #screenshot-of-homepage or graph-of-sales
  • press enter

Currently a limitation is that links to an anchor in a separate post won’t work properly: in PMB’s generated file they will still link to your website instead of the correct section of the project. If you need this to work, please contact us to make it a higher priority.

It’s helpful to understand the difference between internal and external hyperlinks.

Internal hyperlinks link to posts, pages, and custom post types that you’ve included in the current project. That means they should refer to parts of your document, not back to your website.

External hyperlinks link to anything on the Internet that’s not included in your project, like other websites or posts from your website that just aren’t in your project.

PMB designs can handle these two types of links differently. Often, in printed documents, internal hyperlinks are best converted to page references and external hyperlinks are best converted to footnotes, but each design can handle them as it sees best.

Converting Hyperlinks to Page References

The design’s details screen will mention whether it converts hyperlinks to page references, or if it has a setting to control that.

The Classic Digital and Print-Ready Designs both have “Internal Hyperlinks” settings. Just change it to “Replace with Page Reference”

Setting “Internal Hyperlinks” to “Replace with page reference”.

Similar to setting page references, however footnotes can be set for both internal and external hyperlinks.

On the design’s customization page, open up the “Link, Page Referene, and Footnote Settings” area and switch both “Internal Hyperlinks” and “External Hyperlinks” to “Replace with footnote”.

Lastly, you may want to remove hyperlinks entirely. Just set the design’s customizations to “Remove” for both Internal and External hyperlinks.

Adding Other Footnotes

On a final note with regards to footnotes, you can add your own entirely custom footnotes.

Just add the shortcode pmb_footnote to the start of a phrase, and end it with /pmb_footnote. The contents between those two shortcodes will become the footnote.

The pmb_footnote opening and closing shortcodes.
The footnote number when viewed in the file.
The footnote content at the base of the page.

Link your Content!

Seeing how adding page references, footnotes, and hyperlinks are just a couple clicks, and work so well in different formats, you should really have no excuse not to use them. They will help your readers know where referenced content is located, and spend less time wondering “now where was that mentioned?”

For more information about how each design differs, especially with regards to hyperlinks, page references, and footnotes, please see the section on designs.