Adding links to captions in your Map Tour

By Bern Szukalski, Esri

The Story Map Tour template is one of the most popular story map templates, combining an interactive map, a photo and text panel, and a thumbnail carousel to create a compelling virtual tour. You will find many examples on the Story Map Tour gallery.

A question we were asked — how can I add a link to the caption or description under the photo? Here’s how.

The Description is what appears underneath each photo in the photo and text panel, as shown below:

To add a link to the description you can use the <a> tag and href attribute in the text in your CSV file, or simply add it to the description text.

Use target=”_blank” to open the link in a new tab or window, rather than opening the link in the same tab and leaving the current place in the Map Tour. You can also apply formatting like font size and color to your link. Here’s an example caption which creates a pink link and opens it in a new tab or window:

A map tour of historic locations and places of interest in Redlands, California. Click the arrow to advance to the next tour location, or click a thumbnail or location on the map for more information. <a href="http://www.rahs.org/" style="color:#f8d9dc" target="_blank">Redlands Area Historical Society</a>

The Treasures of Redlands map tour uses the description above. Note the link in the photo caption:

For more information and examples, visit the Story Maps website.

Originally published at blogs.esri.com on September 20, 2015.