text formatting?

I have an SQL database where I'm pulling up some long paragraph cells. I was wondering how I might be able to format the text within these cells... if this is possible. For instance, if there is a website, I would like to make it an active link…. or I might want to bold something and put in a button to do so.
I know this is probably very complicated but I was wondering if anyone knows where or what I should start reading to be able to do something like this? Any points or ideas would be greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance!
RayMaybe the easiest way would be to put tags into the text, and store the text as HTML within the server. Then, when you pull it out, just make sure you display it as HTML and not just text. This would mean that you would have to manually style the text and type all the tags before storing it into the server.

HTH

Jags
yeah thats what I've been doing right now, it works but I thought there might be a better way. Thanks.