Thread

Hello All,

I am trying to allow the client to input a url to an external site through a channel entry but the link continues to display “http://mysite.com/

” before the url. I’ve read some entries on turning off the xhtml, etc. but nothing seems to work correctly. Any suggestions?

{exp:channel:entries channel="newsletter" status="open" paginate="bottom" limit="3"}
                    <li>
                    <article class="thePush">
                        <div class="date">{entry_date format="%F %d, %Y"}</div>
                            <div class="caption">
                                <h2><a href="http://{newsletter_excerpt}" class="title">{title}</a></h2>
<p>                                <a href="http://{newsletter_excerpt}" class="continue">Continue reading »</a><br />
                            </div><br />
                    </article><br />
                    </li><br />
                {paginate}<br />
                    Page {current_page} of {total_pages} pages {pagination_links}<br />
                {/paginate}<br />
                {/exp:channel:entries}

Is {newsletter_excerpt} the link field?  It’s not leaping out at me.

Yes, {newsletter_excerpt} is the field where I am adding an external url.

Ok, by the look of it, there are two things with your custom field:

1) under field options, make sure you set “Default Text Formatting for This Field” to “none” (the are appearing likely because it is or has been set to XHTML)

2) external links must include http:// or they will try to link internally (hence the mysite.com being in your url).  The easy way to foolproof that is to use the custom field add-on VZ URL.  It automatically inserts the http:// for you in the field (though still giving you the ability to overwrite it if needed) and it uses Ajax to verify if the URL entered is valid (and gives you a little green check if it is, red X if it is not) so it’s a great way to double check the entered value if it’s a url.  You have to install the add-on, install VZ URL as a field type, and then change your field type on {newsletter_excerpt} to the VZ URL field type to use it.  I use it all the time - it’s a subtle but great little field type to use.

Hope that helps.

Hey John St-Amand,

I wanted to say thanks for the help.
The first choice did not work but VZ URL did.
Thanks!

No problem.  The first item was simply to eliminate the tags that were appearing.  The second was simply to give you (or your client) a visual and programmatic reminder to include the http part in the URL to ensure that the browser did not interpret the link as an internal one.

Glad it worked out for you.

Cheers!