External Links in New Window / New Tab

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.

If you need a more advanced plugin, with more options try our free WP External Links plugin.

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