From [ProBlogger](http://www.problogger.net/archives/2005/11/08/making-titles-live-links/):

>One of the first tips I was given when i started to blog that I’ve not talked about for a while here is to consider making the titles of your posts live links (permalinks).

>These days most blogging software does this automatically for you – however today as I’ve surfed around the web I’ve seen quite a few blogs that do not do it. Instead they link to the individual pages on their blog with the word ‘permalink’.

>I hope they’ll forgive me but let me give you a couple of examples on two of my favorite blogs – [**A View from Home**](http://www.momathome.com/viewfromhome/) and [Micro Persuasion.](http://www.micropersuasion.com/) You’ll see in both instances that if you put your cursor over their post titles that they are not live links and that they have the ‘permalink’ link to their individual pages.

After I got over the warm fuzzies that *the* Darren Rowse referred to my little ‘ole blog as one his “favorites” (back at ya …[ProBlogger](http://www.problogger.net) has been a must-read for me for quite some time) I realized that he was right. **Was.** Quick template fix and a few extra lines in my stylesheet and all better and link-happy now. I still have the “Permalink” there because it’s always been there and I don’t want to have folks hunting around to figure out how to click through to my permalink if they’re used to seeing the word.

Here’s the thing… Shh, don’t tell anyone…but I’m learning all this stuff as I go. Every blog I design has a new trick I learn that I didn’t know before. And quite often, when I learn that new trick I forget to go back to previous blogs and apply what I’ve learned. I try to test out the bold stuff here first, of course. But the little things slip by. Like turning titles into links. If you visit the [Colorectal Cancer Coalition](http://www.c-three.org) [news](http://www.c-three.org/news) or [advocacy](http://www.c-three.org/advocacy) blogs I was talking about earlier, you’ll see that all the titles are links. Always have been. As a matter of fact, there’s no “permalink” to be found. As I was building those templates, I was careful to consider the fact that visitors wouldn’t be bloggers or techies so I didn’t want any language that I couldn’t easily explain without having to literally explain it (with the exception of the RSS feed…where I felt I had no choice but to use the little picture but I included a “what is this?” link for folks who didn’t understand what it meant). I wanted those pages to be blogs with all the benefits of blogs (easy remote updating, templates, RSS, plug-ins, comments, etc.) without necessarily *screaming* “hey, I’m a blog so you have to know the cryptic vocabulary familiar to bloggers.”

As promised, my next entry will discuss some of the other technical decisions I made on that site. But for now, thanks again Darren for pointing out something I should have noticed and corrected a while ago. Much appreciated!

Tags: blogging, movable type