Blogger, please leave my HTML alone...

September 27, 2007 4:12 AM

Is there any way of forcing Blogger to recognise the ( and ) symbols?

I have an affiliate link on my blog, which is in the format of http://blah.affiliatewebsite.com/click=p(12345)a(12345). When I add that text to the HTML page on Blogger, it gets changed to http://blah.affiliatewebsite.com/click=p%2812345%29a%2812345%29, which prevents the link from working correctly.

I figured I could use the html code for (, but Blogger still changes it to %28. Is there anything I can do to make Blogger leave the HTML alone and not mess with it?

This problem happens on all browsers, so I know it's not a Firefox specific issue. Changing the affiliate link isn't an issue, unfortunately.

If you need to see the blog, my email address is in my profile. I ask a lot of questions about my blog here, and I don't want people thinking that I'm trying to advertise.

posted by Solomon to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

Best answer: Tiny Url?

Try this. It sounds like your solution. And, it's free!
posted by Corky at 4:20 AM on September 27, 2007

I know this isn't exactly helpful, but it's definitely the affiliate site and not blogger that's at fault here. RFC1738 does not list ( and ) on the list of "unsafe" characters that must be encoded, however it does permit them to be encoded:

On the other hand, characters that are not required to be encoded (including alphanumerics) may be encoded within the scheme-specific part of a URL, as long as they are not being used for a reserved purpose.

So the affiliate site is rejecting a perfecly valid encoding of the URL.
posted by Rhomboid at 4:45 AM on September 27, 2007

Does Blogger do escape characters? Try preceding each with a backslash like so: \( \)
posted by Cat Pie Hurts at 4:49 AM on September 27, 2007

Response by poster: Rhomboid, the link works fine if I host it myself and view it through Firefox, or if I put it on some free hosting to test it.

The %28 bits come from the Blogger display when I edit the posting. It's definitely Blogger that's altering the text. :)
posted by Solomon at 7:02 AM on September 27, 2007

Yes, of course blogger is changing the URL, that's not what I'm saying. My point is that the affiliate site should still accept it; it's perfectly valid to encode ( as %28 in a URL, so the problem lies in the non-compliant parsing code at the affiliate site.
posted by Rhomboid at 7:06 AM on September 27, 2007

Response by poster: I apologise. I misread what you typed.
posted by Solomon at 7:38 AM on September 27, 2007