External Links in New Window / New Tab

Description

Opens external links in a new tab or a or new window. You can set URLs that should either be forced to open in a new window or ignored.

The plugin produces XHTML Strict compliant code and is search engine optimized (SEO).
This is done using JavaScript’s window.open()-function. It adds only a few lines of vanilla JavaScript to the page, and does not require any external libraries like jQuery.

Most other plugins perform a hack by altering the target parameter (i.e. <a href="http://somewhere.example" target="_blank">). That method is not XHTML Strict compliant.
This plugin handles the links client-side, which lets search engines follow the links properly. Also, if a browser does not support JavaScript, the plugin is simply inactive, and does not result in any errors.

Credits
Inspired by the Zap_NewWindow plugin by Tom Köhler.
The banner is a photo by Monja Da Riva.

Translations
Danish by Kristian Risager Larsen
Dutch by Paul Staring
Lithuanian by Vincent G
Other translations will be appreciated!

Known bugs
The plugin conflicts with other plugins that change the links’ `onClick´ attribute.

Original developer
Kristian Risager Larsen – kezze.dk

Installation

  1. Copy the plugin to /wp-content/plugins/
  2. Activate the plugin.
  3. Eventually, change the settings in Settings->External Links.

Reviews

December 17, 2020
Works great, and when I had an unexpected issue, the author replied quickly with a solution.
November 1, 2020
I have a free version, it does the job just fine. But PLEASE stop spamming the dashboard and notifications with permanent discount offers!!!! Even once I went to the settings page and clicked on your popup "Don't show this again", guess what - it pops up again when I return there. This is a common sense issue, you are frustrating.
October 31, 2020
Please be honest and tell at the release notes that the only change was adding a non-sense Ad to another plugin, instead of "minor changes".
October 31, 2020
They Spam the Dashboard with Ads for other Plugins. We will remove all Plugins from this Company.
Read all 65 reviews

Contributors & Developers

“External Links in New Window / New Tab” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.

Contributors

“External Links in New Window / New Tab” has been translated into 5 locales. Thank you to the translators for their contributions.

Translate “External Links in New Window / New Tab” into your language.

Interested in development?

Browse the code, check out the SVN repository, or subscribe to the development log by RSS.

Changelog

1.42

  • 2021-01-30
  • added flyout menu

1.41

  • 2020-10-21
  • minor update

1.4

  • 2019-08-26
  • WebFactory took over development
  • minor fixes
  • 40,000 installs; 178,750 downloads

1.3.3

Verified compatibility with WordPress 5.0

1.3.2

Updated: Danish translation

1.3.1

Verified compatibility with WordPress 4.0
Added: Plugin logo for WordPress 4.0
Added: Dutch translation.

1.3

Added: Possibility to force and ignore user-defined strings in URLs. This feature has been requested.
Added: Lithuanian and Danish translation.

1.2

Added: Translation-ready.

1.1.1

Fixed: Deprecation warning (Thanks to boo1865)

1.1.0

Changed: Better practice for opening links. The plugin now uses the onClick-attribute instead of writing JavaScript directly into the href-attribute. This enables users to right-click the link and open in a new window/tab, save the target etc.

1.0.1

Fixed: Removes target attribute from links instead of setting the attribute to null. (Thanks to crashnet)

1.0

Fixed: Credits to Tom Köhler (Charset).
Fixed: Links.

0.9

Initial release.