Mass remove external links

[ozzy47]

Is this because they are live links?

[gobears20]

Yeah it started out the images so I turned that off but then they came back and found links that were going to bad sites.

[ozzy47]

Ok first do a complete backup of the site.

Then go to ACP--> Settings --> Options --> BB Code Settings --> Enabled Built-in BB Codes set the Allow Link BBCode to no.

Then go to ACP --> Maintenance --> General Update Tools and run the Rebuild Post Cache

Now any links such as https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=254263 should show up like this, [url]https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=254263[/url]

Hopefully that will satisfy adsense, as you no longer have live links to sites.

[gobears20]

Thanks for that info! If I do something like that and decide to turn it back on after that will the links from when people start posting links show up? I don't mind if the links show up after all of this its the back dated ones I want to show up without the link like you have above..

What I am thinking about doing is creating the backup site and using it as a test site to see what everything actually looks like

[ozzy47]

If they post links after you do as I suggested, then turn it back on, sure it will show as a live link. As far as the old links, I am not totally sure, it is something that is not tested to any extent.

[gobears20]

Thanks

I am actually surprised I don't see a mod for this because I can't be the only site that adsense is coming at about this. I hope this doesn't happen to anybody.

[ozzy47]

I might have another solution. First do a full backup.

Then in phpmyadmin, run the following two queries:

UPDATE post SET pagetext = REPLACE(pagetext, '[url', '[/url')
UPDATE post SET pagetext = REPLACE(pagetext, '[URL', '[/URL')

Then rebuild the post cache as explained before. now all older posts links will look like this, [/url]https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=254263[/url]

This way the older links can not be made live again.

[gobears20]

Thanks, I may end up doing that.

Some things I am noticing is that if you enter www or http it will automatically show as a link on my site. It’s almost like I would have to look for anything like http or www and replace. It would be kind of like breaking the links which in my case would not be a bad thing . Some other things I have thought about was redirecting all links to a specific Website. I saw somebody post something about that.

[ozzy47]

Yeah not sure about the other ways, but I think the way I described is going to be the simplest to do.

[gobears20]

Thanks so much for your input!