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Linking Image in HTML: How to create links from images

  • By Steve Founder of PageDart

We are going to take a beginner friendly look at how to create image links on your website.

We will look at which HTML tags you need to use in the code.

If you have never done this before, don't worry! I will guide you through the whole process.

By the end of this article, you will be creating image links all over your web page and the Internet.

We are also going to look at some more advanced techniques towards the end of the article if you are feeling brave.

Grab a coffee, let's dive in!

To get links on your home page you need to create a hyperlink. To do this in HTML you need to use an <a> tag. Each <a> tag has two parts the opening and closing tag.

Here is an example:

<a href="...">
    ...
</a>

In the above, you can see that the open tag:

<a href="...">

Creates the start of the hyperlink. Then we close the tag with:

</a>

Any text that we write between the open and close tag is your link text. For Example:

<a href="...">
    My Great Link
</a>

To turn this into a link we need to add a URL. To do this we add the URL to the href attribute. The URL can point to anywhere on the internet. For this example we are going to use the PageDart homepage:

<a href="https://pagedart.com">
  My Great Link
</a>

Make sure to include the full URL with HTTPS at the front.

That is all there is to create a text-only link in HTML. Next, let's look at how we can add an image to a web page using HTML.

How do you Create an image in HTML?

To add an image to your web page use an img tag.

This tag is a bit different from an a tag in that it does not have an opening and closing tag.

To create an img tag you need to give the tag a source file. Use the src attribute to do this:

<img src="/favicon-32x32.png">

This will add an image to the screen like this:

Now we have an image we need to turn it into a link. To do that we need to add a <img> tag inside the <a> tags creating a linking image in HTML.

Let's look at an example next.

To turn an image into a link you need to add the <img> tag inside the <a> tag. So taking our earlier example the source code would look like this:

<a href="https://pagedart.com">
  <img src="/favicon-32x32.png">
</a>

Which would produce this HTML:

By adding the <img> tag inside an <a> tag the browser can see that the image should be clickable. You have turned the image into a link!

If you are using WordPress then you can add this HTML code to your page using the text view in the page editor.

You can also add text and images inside the link, let's look at this.

Image and Text as a Link

The example above showed how to add only an image as the link.

What if we wanted to add both an image and text to a link.

Well, in this case, we need to make sure that we add the text before we close the <a> tag:

<a href="https://pagedart.com">
  <img src="/favicon-32x32.png">
  PageDart Home 
</a>

In the above, we have added “PageDart Home” inside the <a> tag along with the <img> tag. When shown in a web browser on the page it will look like this:

There is one more attribute on the <img> tag that we have not discussed and you should be using.

It is the alt attribute.

Images on the internet should have an alt attribute. This is a text description of the image.

Screen readers use the alt text to help visually impaired users. The screen readers will read out the text description when it finds an image.

To do this we add an alt attribute to the img tag like this:

<a href="https://pagedart.com">
  <img alt="PageDart.com" src="/favicon-32x32.png">
</a>

Now when the screen reader reads this image it will say “PageDart.com” out loud.

It is important to follow best practices when writing image alt text.

Make sure you think about the person who is using the screen reader. Write your alt text description for them and describe the image as best you can.

This is all you need to create linking images in HTML. Yet, there are a few more advanced techniques that you can use. If you are feeling brave we will look at these next.

A more advanced technique is to use CSS. CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheet and it allows you to change how a HTML page looks.

With CSS you can set a background image on an element such as our <a> tag.

Here we would have HTML that looks like this:

<style>
  a {
    background-image: url("/favicon-32x32.png");
    display: block;
    height:32px;
    width:32px;
  }
</style>
<a href="https://pagedart.com"></a>

So this time there is nothing inside the <a> tag but the image is set using the CSS style. This would show the following in the browser:

We can use a similar technique with a <button> tag.

Advanced Technique: Using a Button

In this example, we are going to use the <button> tag instead of the <a> tag.

We can create the same output as the example above using this HTML:

<style>
  .link {
    background-image: url("/favicon-32x32.png");
    border: 0;
    height:32px;
    width:32px;
  }
</style>
<script>
  function goHome() {
    return window.open("https://pagedart.com", "_blank")
  }
</script>
<input type="button" class="link" onclick="goHome()"/>

Which creates this output:

Here we are using JavaScript to open a new browser tab. Sending the user to the PageDart home page.

I have no idea why you would ever do this! But, I wanted to show you what is possible and how flexible HTML, CSS and JavaScript can be.

The last example I am going to show is using an image map.

Advanced Technique: Image Map

Image maps are single images with clickable areas. They have lost popularity over the years but they are still part of the HTML5 specification. This means that browsers such as Internet Explorer, Chrome and Safari will support them.

Charts are good examples of Image Maps such as organizational charts, like this:

Then to make each pink area a clickable link we would create a map like this:

<img src="org.png" alt="Staff Organisation Chart" usemap="#Map">

<map name="Map" id="Map">
	<area
		shape="rect"
		coords="176,14,323,58"
		href="…"
		alt="Chairman"
	>
  <area 
    shape="rect" 
    coords="81,75,226,114" 
    href="…"
    alt="Secretary"
  >
  <area 
    shape="rect" 
    coords="6,138,155,182" 
    href="…"
    alt="Marketing Director"
  >
  <area 
    shape="rect"
    coords="175,138,323,182"
    href="…"
    alt="Sales Director"
  >
  <area
    shape="rect" 
    coords="345,136,496,186" 
    href="…"
    alt="Finance Director"
  >
</map>

We have added the attribute usemap to the img tag.

Then within the map tag we have an area tag. Each of these areas creates a clickable area that acts as a button.

Using a Linking Image in HTML

We have looked at five different ways to add an image as a link on your web page:

  1. An image as a link
  2. Image and text as a link
  3. Using CSS to set an image as a link
  4. Using a button as a link
  5. Using image maps

All these can turn images into links. You should now have the confidence to try this yourself.

We have also looked at accessibility and how to set Alt text to help the visually impaired.

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