External links should be _blank, nofollow

[Brian]

External links should be set to target=”_blank” rel=”nofollow”.

Also preview text should end in ellipses.

These easy changes still not done in latest updated.

[Alyssa]

@acroyes send to the developers.

[Brian]

I see target=”_blank” has been added in 1.2.1, but why not rel=”nofollow” ???

It’s not good to have SEO link juice bleeding to other sites. Facebook, Twitter, every other social network includes it. It’s pretty standard practice. Leaving it off links makes your site a target for spammers. This should be on all user generated external links.

[Brian]

Right now it’s on the URL link, but not the title link.

[Brian]

The URL link needs to be target=”_blank” too.

Summary: Please add target=”_blank” and rel=”nofollow” to both the URL link and article title link.

Thank you.

[Alyssa]

@acroyes these should be easy fixes for the next release

[Brian]

It’s been two releases and this still has not been fixed.

[Alyssa]

@acroyes sorry this has been so long without a resolution but this appears to be a WordPress/BuddyPress issue rather than a plugin/theme issue. You see, the links are part of the content within the activity while the title text is part of the Wall plugin we control. I found this great plugin that works perfect for BuddyPress content for you: http://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/sem-external-links.zip I hope this resolves your issue.

[Brian]

That’s interesting, but I’d rather not install another plugin for such a trivial change.

For links within the activity text, can’t BuddyBoss just make another filter modeled after the bp_activity_make_nofollow_filter which adds target=”_blank” to external links?

As for the title text, all you need to do is:

Change line 421 of wall-functions.php from this:
$updated_content .= '<span class="bb_link_preview_title"><a href="' . esc_url( $_POST[ 'bb_link_url' ] ) . '" target="_blank">' . addslashes( $_POST[ 'bb_link_title' ] ) . '</a></span>';

to this:
$updated_content .= '<span class="bb_link_preview_title"><a href="' . esc_url( $_POST[ 'bb_link_url' ] ) . '" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">' . addslashes( $_POST[ 'bb_link_title' ] ) . '</a></span>';

[Anonymous]

Hi @acroyes
I have included them inside development version, It will be pushed in next update.
Regards
Varun Dubey