Building a Programmers Blog: External Links

On Wikipedia, internal links (to other wikipedia pages) are distinuished from external links (to other websites) by small icons that appear next to the links. Some users find this very helpful. You can do this on your blog by using ELF.

ELF is short for External Links Filter, a simple module that provides the link icons.

Download External Links Filter and install it in your Drupal instance.

Go to Site Configuration and Input Formats. Then Configure an input format and turn on the External Links filter. Don't forget to Save Configuration when you are done.

If you already have content in your blog using the input type you modified, you'll see that all your existing external links are now properly tagged. This highlights one feature of Drupals input filter system - the content of the node is transformed when the node is rendered, not when it is saved, allowing you to add new filters to enhance existing content.