Magic linking is an easy way to link to something in Ravelry that you are mentioning. Since the early days of Ravelry, you have been able to use the instructions listed just above the posting box to quickly and easily link to a person, pattern, yarn, etc. Recently, Casey made it even easier to do create a magic link.

If you are mentioning a person, pattern, yarn, group or pattern source, you can make a magic link. To do this, just put the name of the person or thing in brackets (see below). When you do this, suggestions will pop up that match what you are typing in the brackets. You can carefully pick the item you are linking from the suggestion list using the cursor or by scrolling down using your keyboard arrows and hitting enter.

You can also use @ before the name of the person/thing instead. Doing this brings up the suggestions in the same manner as the brackets. This will work best if you are magic linking things that are one word – without the closing bracket the linking menu will stop searching for things once you type a space.

You can use the Preview button in the upper right of the page to see how the links look and to click them to be sure you linked to the person or thing you wanted.

When you magic link a person in the forums, they get a notification in their Ravelry messages that we call an “ear burn” because it says “are your ears burning?” This refers to an expression which says your ears burning is a sign someone is talking about you. You want to choose carefully when magic linking to be sure you aren’t linking the wrong person, resulting in a notification to the wrong person, as well.

When you magic link a pattern or yarn, your post will show up in the forum posts tab on the pattern/yarn page which can be helpful to others who are interested in that pattern or yarn.

We hope this makes it even easier to post in the forums. This feature will also work in other text areas on the site. The discussion about this feature happened in the For the Love of Ravelry forum. We love it when Ravelers share their ideas with us. You can find a list of those ideas on The List and you can comment and vote on current suggestions there. Thanks for helping us make Ravelry better every day!