Firefox & Wordpress in OS X: I have to publish posts twice for links to work

July 26, 2006 7:02 PM

When I use Firefox to create and publish an entry on my Wordpress 2 blog I have to go back and re-publish the entry to get any HTTP links I have included in the post to actually work. Am I doing something wrong? A bit more detail inside.

When I first publish a post all the text and images and formatting go through fine and the links show up as a link on display (i.e. different colour, underline, mouseover effects, etc.) in a number of different browsers, but the links themselves are "empty", i.e. on mouseover nothing shows in the status bar and clicking them is futile. I have to then go back into the "Manage" page in the WordPress interface, click to "Edit" the new post and then save it again, and then the links work. Essentially I have to post every new post twice to get the links to show up.

I have checked this using Safari, Camino and OmniWeb and indeed the links are empty when the post is first published. I have also tried searching WordPress support database and the forums and Google but I haven't found anything. I am quite new to the whole blogging world and any counsel will be appreciated. Sorry if has been addressed here before.

OS X 10.4.7
Firefox 1.0.5.4
WordPress 2

posted by persona non grata to computers & internet (11 comments total)

Put up a post with that problem and let us look at it.
posted by AmbroseChapel at 8:10 PM on July 26, 2006

Well a link is two things. Any text that has link coding around it will show up like a link wiht the hover and the underline, so

<a href="">link</a>

will look like: link

that will make the word link seem underlined but the link will be, as you describe it, empty. The same thing will happen if, instead of including a full URL you only include one starting with www and skip the http://

<a href="www.example.com">link</a>

will do this, which is a different sort of broken: link

Are you using the link button to make your links? Are you typing in the whole URL? Do you mouseover the links to see what they are linking to in preview ( I think you can do this with wordpress). I have almost the same setup as you, and those are the only things that I can think of that a novice user could do to create this problem. Do what AC says and see if you can show us what you mean.
posted by jessamyn at 8:30 PM on July 26, 2006

Here is an example:

http://www.whitemanstew.com/2006/07/26/i-love-this-site-called-metafilter/

I just published that. The link is dead so far as I can tell.
posted by persona non grata at 8:45 PM on July 26, 2006

No, jessamyn, I am using HTML for the links, and I try to be careful. Yes, I am typing in the full URL. It's just weird. I only use Firefox because it has the buttons for "bold" and "italic" and what not.
posted by persona non grata at 8:48 PM on July 26, 2006

That's a self-link obviously. I just want to get this sorted out so I can keeping on with my marginal blog. It's frustrating and I feel dumber than I really am.
posted by persona non grata at 8:52 PM on July 26, 2006

It's a bug.
posted by bonaldi at 9:22 PM on July 26, 2006

Gah. OK. Thanks bonaldi. I'd love it if someone would explain that to me but that would entail me really knowing what I am doing and that is impossible. I say "no" to that. I'll just keep double posting to my blog and wait for an update. If that is right then this is Karma. I am OK. Thanks jessamyn and other offering people.
posted by persona non grata at 9:31 PM on July 26, 2006

I don't use Wordpress, but it looks like the bug comes from manually typing HTML into the rich text editor. Try using the HTML link button, or using the plain text editor if you can get to it. Otherwise, just do a find and replace on the source of your published posts to turn xhref into href
posted by bonaldi at 9:34 PM on July 26, 2006

I am deleting the above link now for MetaFilter reasons. Thanks, all, for sorting this out. I am blameless as I always love to be.
posted by persona non grata at 9:38 PM on July 26, 2006

Fixed.
posted by persona non grata at 9:39 PM on July 26, 2006

png: it appears, specifically, not to be a wordpress bug, but a TinyMCE editor bug.

You can either turn the fancy editor off, or yell at their team. :-)
posted by baylink at 9:09 AM on July 27, 2006