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External Link Tagger

Automatically adds target="_blank" and rel="noopener noreferrer" to external links in WordPress post content, excerpts, and widgets using DOMDocument for reliable HTML parsing.

by Jacqui Dyachenko · github.com/jdyach/external-link-tagger · website

★ 0stars

Install

Download source zip No release zip yet

This is the repository archive. It installs, but the folder name will carry the branch suffix and updates will not flow.

Install straight from GitHub with WP-CLI:

wp plugin install https://github.com/jdyach/external-link-tagger/archive/refs/heads/main.zip
No built-in updater. New versions won't appear under Dashboard → Updates. Install new releases yourself, or let Git Updater track the repository.
Readme github.com/jdyach/external-link-tagger ↗

A WordPress plugin that automatically adds target="_blank" and rel="noopener noreferrer" to external links in post content, excerpts, and text widgets — with a simple settings page to control where it applies.

Features

  • Processes links in post content, excerpts, and text widgets (each toggleable)
  • Uses DOMDocument for reliable HTML parsing — no fragile regex
  • Detects external links by comparing the link hostname against home_url(), so subdomains of your own site are never tagged
  • Skips non-HTTP links (mailto:, tel:, #anchors, javascript:) automatically
  • Preserves any existing rel attribute values — only appends what's missing
  • Settings page under Settings → External Link Tagger
  • Defaults all options to on at activation via register_activation_hook

Installation

  1. Upload the external-link-tagger folder to /wp-content/plugins/
  2. Activate through Plugins → Installed Plugins
  3. Optionally adjust which areas are tagged under Settings → External Link Tagger

How It Works

The plugin hooks into the_content, the_excerpt, and widget_text filters. Each filter runs the HTML through DOMDocument::loadHTML(), iterates all <a> tags, checks whether the href is external, and sets target and rel attributes. The modified HTML is returned from saveHTML().

Settings are stored as a single serialized array in wp_options via the WordPress Settings API.

WordPress Concepts Demonstrated

Concept Where Used
Content filters (the_content, the_excerpt, widget_text) class-elt-tagger.php
DOMDocument HTML parsing class-elt-tagger.php
home_url() + wp_parse_url() for host comparison class-elt-tagger.php
Settings API (register_setting, add_settings_section/field) class-elt-settings.php
register_activation_hook for default options external-link-tagger.php
add_options_page class-elt-settings.php
wp_parse_args for option defaults class-elt-tagger.php

File Structure

external-link-tagger/
├── external-link-tagger.php        # Bootstrap, constants, activation hook
├── README.md
├── assets/
│   └── css/
│       └── admin.css               # Settings page styles
└── includes/
    ├── class-elt-tagger.php        # Core DOMDocument link processing
    └── class-elt-settings.php      # Settings API page

Requirements

  • WordPress 6.0+
  • PHP 8.0+

License

GPL-2.0-or-later