Can someone PLEASE tell me how to do this...?

Question

Can someone please tell me how to do this or point me in the right direction to do it. I have seen alot of sites that "hide" their links (for lack of a better term) and I want to know how to do that. A good example is the sponsored ad on the right hand side (the lulu.com ad) of http://www.writing.com

Can anyone tell me how to do that? I looked at the code and it looks like plain html but it isn't.

And before anyone asks, no i am not affiliated with the site. I just picked that one as an example. I see it alot on sites that use affiliate ppc advertising or affiliate referral urls.

for the person that said it isn't hidden let me say that the status bar defines the link as:
www.writing.com/main/ads/action/go/id/22
The actual link is to www.lulu.com

So you see, the link is "hidden" for the lack of a better word.

Answer 1

It doesn't "hide" the link on that ad. The link is plainly visible in the source code and the status bar on mouseover.

UPDATE:

Thanks for clarifying your question.

It's most likely that there's a script at the actual link that redirects to lulu.com or wherever else you wind up.

Each server-side technology has its own way of redirecting: Response.Redirect in ASP.NET; header() in PHP; etc.

You can also redirect requests with most HTTP daemons (Web servers, e.g. Apache, IIS).

Answer 2

The link shown in the status bar is the actual link. What you can't see is how that page immediately redirects you to lulu.com. The reason for doing it this way is so the target site can track which affiliates bring people to their site.

Answer 3

you would just have to add the anchor tags around the image tag. So, when the person clicks the image it goes to your URL