By default all external and internal links on a WordPress site works the same way. But you might have noticed various websites displaying and processing external links differently from internal links. For instance: Websites based on Mediawiki shows a small icon on external links, some websites open external links on a new window or tab etc etc.
In this lesson you will learn how to process external links i.e. outgoing links differently from the links interconnecting your website pages locally.
There are various WordPress plugins that allows you to do so. Here we will use External Links plugin, because it has got many features, all works and the plugin is popular among the WordPress users.
Start by installing ‘External Links’ plugin in WordPress
Upon activation, visit your admin area dashboard Settings -> External Links page and select your options:
- You can process all outgoing links, rather than only those within your entries’ content and text widgets.
- Add an external link icon to outgoing links. You can use a class=”no_icon” attribute on links to override this.
- Add no follow link relationship rel=nofollow to the links. (Note: You can use a rel=”follow” attribute on links to override this.)
- Open outgoing links in new windows. Note that this can damage your visitor’s trust towards your site in that they can think your site used a pop-under.
- Turn on “autolinks” functionality
- Exclude domains and subdomains from processing.
The autolink functionality automatically converts all types or pasted URLs to hyperlinked URLs in post, page content, excerpts and text widgets.