How do you add links now?

  • webbonomicon · Member ·

    I’ve left my WordPress site unused for about three years, and as is very on-brand for WordPress, after three years of updates I’ve come back to find it’s completely unusable.

    All I want to do is add a link to some text, and there are at least three ways – that I’ve found so far – this is no longer possible.

    First, I can’t finalize the link. When I highlight the bit of text in question, the little drop-down box appears into which I can paste the URL for the link. As soon as I’ve done that, the drop-down starts flickering rapidly in and out of existence so I can’t press the button to confirm this addition.

    Second, it adds junk to the URL itself I put in. Something about “default template” or something similar; I can barely read it because, again, it flickers constantly and won’t let me edit it. By hitting ctrl+v and then Enter really fast, I can make the link appear, but it’ll be junked up with that extra nonsense when I try to publish it and doesn’t work.

    And third, it messes up the formatting of the rest of the page as badly as if I was trying to add an image to Microsoft Word. Paragraph break spontaneously gone, everything jammed in together.

    I’m using Firefox and I don’t have any WordPress plugins.

    What exactly has been going on around here? How long has this been a thing? Does anyone know a fix or can we just not put links in WordPress pages anymore?

    The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

  • staff-totoro · Staff ·

    Hello,

    I’m sorry to hear you’ve been having trouble trying to add a link to your text after a long break from using your website. I’d like to assure you that we’re here to help get your site back in working order.

    Based on what you’ve described, there could be a few reasons why you’re experiencing these issues, such as an outdated browser version, or cache-related issues. It looks like you are using Mozilla Firefox as your browser, so with this in mind I would like you to try the following

    Additionally can you share (in your reply) the URL you are adding to your post so that we can use it in retracing your steps? We want to make sure we use the exact URL and formatting to confirm that is not a related issue

    Thanks for the additional info!

  • webbonomicon · Member ·

    Thank you for the reply and the suggestions; I was able to make it work in Chrome. I hate using Chrome but I guess I’m stuck with it now.

  • webbonomicon · Member ·

    Correction: I was able to insert a link but the page formatting is still borked. The page I am trying to edit is this one:

    Bonus #65: The Girl from Everywhere, part 2

    The text is supposed to start below the previous and next chapter links on the top line. No matter how many times I hit enter in the text editor to push it down a line, it insists on starting on the same line, right after the link with no space. I can make it go lower by inserting a line break but that looks awful. How do I make the published version acknowledge basic formatting?

  • staff-totoro · Staff ·

    Hi again,

    Thank you for the reply and the suggestions; I was able to make it work in Chrome. I hate using Chrome but I guess I’m stuck with it now.

    You did not clarify but have you tried clearing your cache and allowing 3rd party cookies from WordPress.com as directed above. The fact that it’s working in Chrome indicates that the issue is specific to Firefox, but those steps may fix it.

    I was able to insert a link but the page formatting is still borked. The page I am trying to edit is this one:

    I am able to see the difference in formatting between the editor view and the public view on https://tiraas.net/2020/10/06/bonus-65-the-girl-from-everywhere-part-2/

    Can you walk us through how you are creating that content? You are editing it in the Classic editor using HTML to create the links and layout somehow? Or are you copying and pasting the content into the classic block from another source like a text document, email, or other site?

    Also can you share a link to a recent post you have where you added content in the same way, but it is displaying as intended? It may help if we can compare to a “good” example to help spot why it’s not working out this time.

    Thanks for the additional info!

  • webbonomicon · Member ·

    Firefox is up to date and third party cookies are allowed, I checked that. Clearing the cache is not an option at the moment due to an unrelated matter. I’ll try that when said matter is resolved, meanwhile I can make do with Chrome.

    I am using the classic editor. I highlight the text I want to make a hyperlink, click the link button, and paste the URL into the relevant box that appears, then click the button on said box with an enter symbol (this is the part that Firefox isn’t letting me do at the moment). What’s going wrong now is putting a paragraph break right after that link. The text editor shows the paragraph break just fine, but when I update the chapter the publicly visible version puts the following text right after the link I just created no matter what I do.

    The URL in question is acquired by ctrl+c from the address bar of the relevant page in Firefox. Is it possible it contains some kind of metadata that’s interfering with WordPress? I’ve never heard of such a thing, but I have no other ideas.

    I’m afraid there are no recent chapters; I am preparing to resume work on this blog but nothing has been done on it in three years.

    Thanks for the help. Worst case, I can resolve the formatting issue by putting in a horizontal line there; I don’t care for the way it looks but at least it works.

  • staff-95percentghost · Staff ·

    It definitely sounds odd that you’re experiencing this in Firefox but not Chrome! I wasn’t able to replicate what you’re seeing in Firefox – in the Classic Editor both the URL box and the paragraph breaks worked correctly for me, and I didn’t see any extra data/meta-data being added to the URL I copied.

    I took the liberty of testing with the blog post you shared earlier – I saved no changes to it but while using the Classic Editor it seems like I was able to add a paragraph break work, by pressing the Enter key on my keyboard as I’d expect:

    Preview showing paragraph break and resulting HTML markup


    I’m using Firefox version 115.0.2 for reference; while I do have extensions installed and active in the browser they’re not affecting my editing experience. Are you using a different version of Firefox, and does this still happen in a private window so any extensions are disabled?

  • webbonomicon · Member ·

    I tried it in a private Firefox window, yes; same result, and also had that glitch where I couldn’t add a link at all. The formatting error is occurring in Firefox and Chrome.

  • webbonomicon · Member ·

    Yeah, I also have 115.0.2. The classic WordPress editor works as above, at least within the editor: all formatting behaves as expected. It’s only when publishing that the formatting error appears on the publicly visible version.

  • deancroyal · Staff ·

    Clarifying where we are for a moment.

    You wrote posts years ago with the older “classic” editor. You’re returning to this work after a long break. You recently attempted to add a hyperlink to some text in an older post and that did not work as easily as you remember and expected.

    • You could not hyperlink text with any consistency
    • Methods you did try also broke the formatting of the post

    We’ve gathered a lot of information form you; thanks so much for providing it!

    What I would like to do for a moment is see if we can focus only on the hyperlinking text issue.

    I’ve just tested a method of highlighting text and hyperlinking that text that I don’t see mentioned in this topic so far. It worked on your older post for me. I’ll walk you through what I did then I’d like for you to try it and let me know if it worked, and if that could be a way of hyperlinking text within your older posts moving forward.

    Step 1: Copy the URL that you would like to add as a hyperlink to your text in an older post.

    Step 2: Edit the older post.

    Step 3: Highlight the text you wish to hyperlink within the older post.

    Step 3: While the text is highlighted, either press the keyboard shortcut for “paste”, or from your browser menu choose Edit > Paste

    Result: This should instantly turn the text you highlighted into a hyperlink that links to the URL that you copied in Step 1.

    Was that in fact the result for you? If it was, would this method work for you moving forward?

  • webbonomicon · Member ·

    I just observed something very obvious that I didn’t see because I was only looking at the very top line where I first noticed a problem.

    Updating the chapter did not remove that one incident of spacing, it removed all formatting from the post. Instead of paragraphs it’s a single unbroken wall of text now. The formatting exists in the editor; it does not exist when the text is published. That text had not been changed or touched at all since its original publication three years ago. I simply edited the post, went through all that rigamarole to add links, which was the only thing I touched, and when updating it all formatting was removed from the post. So that’s definitely a WordPress issue. Is this a known bug, with a known fix, dare I hope?

  • webbonomicon · Member ·

    Found something particularly weird.

    I figured I’d try deleting all the text from the post and pasting it back in. When I highlighted everything and pressed ctrl+x, instead of cutting all the highlighted text, it cut the single paragraph space I’d been trying to add in, leaving the rest of the “cut” text…uncut, and still present.

    This thing is extremely broken.

  • webbonomicon · Member ·

    Tested again with a different spot, and yes, ctrl+x does not cut all highlighted text, but only the space at the last position of the cursor.

  • webbonomicon · Member ·

    Okay, I fixed the formatting problem by deleting everything from the post and manually re-entering all the text and links, and it works now. The content must’ve just gotten corrupted somehow.

    Thank you for the tip on using ctrl+v to insert a link into highlighted text, that works even with Firefox glitching out.

    My current problems appear to be solved now. Thanks very much for the help.

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