Easy External Links for WordPress

So I was on my third cup of coffee, staring at a blog post where every external link just… dropped me into a new tab like a clueless stranger. It wasn’t even consistent. Some opened in the same window, others in new ones, and none had that little icon people expect. I’d been manually adding target="_blank" and rel="nofollow" for years. Then I found Easy External Links for WordPress. Honestly, it’s not flashy, but it fixed the whole mess in under five minutes.

The good stuff

First off, the domain filtering is a godsend. You can tell it to only apply changes to specific domains-like Twitter or YouTube-so you don’t accidentally slap a nofollow on your own site’s affiliate links. That saved me from a dumb mistake I’ve made twice already. The icon picker is also way more useful than I expected. Instead of guessing what the icon means, I can pick one that actually fits-like a little arrow or a globe-so readers know they’re leaving the site. And the SEO bits? It adds rel="external nofollow" automatically. No more forgetting it when I link to a random news article. Plus, comment links get the same treatment. Boom-no more broken user experience when someone drops a link in a reply.

The not-so-good

It’s not perfect. The plugin doesn’t let you customize the icon size or position. So if you’re doing something fancy with CSS, you’ll still need to tweak it manually. Also, the interface feels a bit dated-no real-time preview, just save and hope. And honestly, it’s not exactly "set and forget." You have to go in and recheck the settings after updating WordPress or switching themes. It works fine, but it’s not as polished as some paid alternatives out there. If you’re running a high-traffic site with complex linking needs, this might feel too basic. But for most bloggers or small sites? It’s plenty.

Bottom line

If you’re using WordPress and want a no-frills way to standardize external links-open in new tabs, add proper SEO tags, show an icon-it’s worth installing. It’s free, it works, and it does exactly what it says. Not groundbreaking, but better than nothing. And since it’s lightweight, it won’t slow down your site. So yeah, give it a shot. Especially if you’re tired of fiddling with every single link by hand. Easy External Links for WordPress isn’t fancy, but it gets the job done.