Is there a guide to understanding the ‘Text and HTML Formatting’ section of the Discussion Forum Module?

My Discussion Forum does not display URL hyperlinks - link. domain comes out <a >domain</a> on both the display and the entry field, as you can see. It does <b> just fine, and the hyperlinks work in Preview. I’ve tried every possible combination in the Text and HTML Formatting preferences.

I hope it doesn’t have anything to do with this Extension, which I’ve since deleted, but can’t seem to turn off.

Anyone? I just seems strange to have a Forum thread correspond to an Entry, yet the Forum can’t display what the Entry does, and this is just basic html too.

In the forum you could always use

Thanks Ingmar,

So I just need a confirmation that I can’t use

in this forum, or any forum. If so, would you explain the reason why?  My other forums allow html hyperlinks.

The reason being that I’ll now have to manually change the four or five hyperlink references each time I publish a corresponding entry everyday - and not looking forward to it.

You can turn on Allow All HTML and that should allow your links to work, Tux.

Alternatively, the pMCode version works in both the forums and weblog, so you could just use that everywhere.

Thanks Lisa,

I do have Allow all HTML selected in > Forum Board Preferences > Default Preferences > Text and HTML Formatting.

I could use the pMCode in my entries, but it would take longer to hard code that than it would be to reformat the code in the forum, and I would think in this day and age I wouldn’t have to do either

You need it set for the specific forum, not the defaults. =)

If you allow regular HTML in the default forum templates, plain old <href=”“> links should work, at least for newly created forums.

ETA: What Lisa said

Thanks Lisa, I think that’s it, though I can’t tell for sure yet since as Ingmar hints, this doesn’t work in existing forum posts. This is where documentation on Text and Formatting HTML would help

Tux, I just tried it myself, and the link is a bit hidden. Here’s what you do, open the Forum module > Forum Management > Edit > Show Preferences. This is in the last line of the table and easy to miss… then simply change HTML Formatting in Posts to “Allow all HTML”.

It works, I tried it

Thanks Ingmar, I found it per Lisa’s comments, but as you stated, it apparently works for only new posts, as it doesn’t allow hyperlinks in existing posts - unless you found otherwise.

I just created this thread and I preferenced every single one of my individual forums with ‘Allow all HTML’.  While the links look active, they still don’t work.

I mean, I’m not trying to do any unique customization work here, just allowing html hyperlinks in my discussion forum.

What scares me is this is a pilot to test whether or not we use Expression Engine for portal sites for downtowns across the U.S., and I’m a little concerned here with the basics.

Your links are <a >foobar</a>, which is odd. Looks like the href=”” part gets removed somewhere? Any plugins? Other custom code?

You’re telling me

The only added plug-in is pi.edit_comments.php.  The only extension is ext.forum_fill.php. I removed index.php from the URL. Not much else I can think of, or capable of.

What is ext.forum_fill.php? I am not familiar with that extension.

Tux, what version and build of EE and the forum are you on, please?

EE 1.6.4 and forum 2.1 - I just installed everything last week.

There may be something deeper going on here and we are investigating.  I’ll keep you updated here, and am going to move this down to Technical Support for now, but may move it again later if needed.

HTML, especially the hyperlinks, are now working fine for the first time - great!