# Is there a problem with the auto linking? **URL:** \ **Category:** About This Message Board\ **Created:** [September 7, 2001, 12:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-problem-with-the-auto-linking/80151 "2001-09-07T00:02:28Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Reeder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c6cbf5/32.png) [@Reeder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reeder)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2001, 12:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-problem-with-the-auto-linking/80151/1 "2001-09-07T00:02:28Z")
[http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?postid=1585241#post1585241](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?postid=1585241#post1585241) ---
**Author:** ![Francesca](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/9fc348/32.png) [@Francesca](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Francesca)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2001, 12:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-problem-with-the-auto-linking/80151/2 "2001-09-07T00:09:25Z")
Your problem is that you’re using the tags. To auto-link, there’s no need to use these tags, just type out the url itself thus: [http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/newreply.php?action=newreply&threadid=85754](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/newreply.php?action=newreply&threadid=85754) No tags needed. Just like you did in the OP. If you want to look snazzy, you can use the url tags like this: \A page\ replacing the \<\> brackets with brackets so that it looks like this: [A page](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/newreply.php?action=newreply&threadid=85754). Make sure you remember to include the quotation marks etc. Fran ---
**Author:** ![Reeder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c6cbf5/32.png) [@Reeder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reeder)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2001, 12:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-problem-with-the-auto-linking/80151/3 "2001-09-07T00:13:21Z")
That’s the thing…I didn’t use them. I used the auto parse. ---
**Author:** ![TheLoadedDog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/35a633/32.png) [@TheLoadedDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TheLoadedDog)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2001, 12:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-problem-with-the-auto-linking/80151/4 "2001-09-07T12:01:54Z")
I had some link weirdness happen to me yesterday: I wanted to link to [doggieslink.com](http://doggieslink.com), so I typed in {URL=“[http://www.doggieslink.com](http://www.doggieslink.com)”}Doggie’s Link{/URL}, but when I previewed, instead of the link taking me to the site, it took me to a “Not Found” error message at the SDMB. I ran the mouse over the link again, and saw that it had somehow been changed to [http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/www.doggieslink.com](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/www.doggieslink.com) . I thought that was weird, so I double checked my code, and previewed a second time. My link was still being tacked onto the SDMB address. In the end I gave up, and couldn’t post the link at all. It was some major weirdness. I still have no idea about why it happened. Some sort of VBulletin brainfart perhaps? ---
**Author:** ![as\_if](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9fc29f/32.png) [@as\_if](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/as_if)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2001, 1:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-problem-with-the-auto-linking/80151/5 "2001-09-07T13:16:16Z")
The problem is that long links break up. If you use the vBcode to hide the link with text (such as “click here”) you can get a longer link. But even so, there are some that break up, such as links to search pages, where parameters stretch out the line. ---
**Author:** ![zut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zut/32/2875_2.png) [@zut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zut)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2001, 1:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-problem-with-the-auto-linking/80151/6 "2001-09-07T13:17:41Z")
Are you sure you included the “http” portion of the link? vB most certainly will append “[http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb)” in front of anything if you forget the http. Check out this test: NOT Amazon [Amazon](http://www.amazon.com) ---
**Author:** ![TheLoadedDog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/35a633/32.png) [@TheLoadedDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TheLoadedDog)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2001, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-problem-with-the-auto-linking/80151/7 "2001-09-07T21:12:13Z")
Thanks, **zut**. I didn’t realise vB would do that. I must have forgotten the ol’ http bizzo. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2001, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-problem-with-the-auto-linking/80151/8 "2001-09-08T21:31:04Z")
vB actually doesn’t do that, your web browser does. vB just takes whatever you typed and puts it directly into a URL. A web browser then determines whether it was meant to be a relative link or an absolute one based on whether it has an “http://” (or other protocol) in front.