How to tell the difference between confluence link and web link?

[jagercode]

Hi all,

I'd like to make visually clear to my users that a certain link leads outside our confluence service. A symbol would suffice.

Has anyone suggestions how to do so?

Kind regards,

Gerco

[Andy Gladstone]

@jagercode why not use an inline link or card as your hyperlink? Both of these display either the site name or the site icon to your users, and will visually demonstrate where the link leads them to.

In the example below I have all three link types displayed. The link at the bottom (currently using the inline style) has the link dialog open just by hovering over it in Edit mode so you can see how easy it is to change the display type. 

I hope this helps!

[Curtis]

We just moved to Confluence Cloud and the new pages. I guess I haven't used an external link with it yet to realize it has so many options.

[jagercode]

@Andy GladstoneThat would be great. However, I just see these options in the link dialog: [go to link], [edit]. unlink] (writing it out, copy+paste screenshot didn't work out). 

And to which macro do you refer by "card"?

FYI, I'm on confluence server 7.13.something.

[Andy Gladstone]

@jagercode ahhhh you did not specify that you are on Confluence Server. Server is going EOSL in 2024, so much of the new functionality is not being built into it. Smart Links are not available on server, sorry for the confusion I may have caused. 

[jagercode]

@Andy GladstoneNo problem, I contributed by being not that explicit.

Well, I guess I have to practice some patience until we've moved over to Cloud as well.

Thanks

[Curtis]

There is no automated solution I'm aware of. But if hovering over the link, and viewing the URL the browser shows for the link, you could manually add an emoji after the link for ones that are external.

A good choice would be the warning emoji. Manually adding this either before or after the link, to highlight that it is external.

[jagercode]

Dutch governmental websites often use a box with an outgoing arrow pointing from bottom left to top right. I am not going to add this manually. This requires discipline and attention of everyone and is unrealistic to expect. instead, I'd like to configure our server in a way it adds such a symbol when rendering weblinks and not confluence links.

A cherry on the cake would be also an extra symbol for confluence links to an item on a different space.

[Claudio Ombrella Digilac - Gold Solution Partner]

The only thing I can propose is:

- Document link will show you the document title and that will be for your Confluence documents. 

- External links, you can modify the text to display, that could be the same as the URL or if you don't want to expose that because long, you will to type some text like "External link: www.google.com".

For the moment there are no visuals that can satisfy your requirement. I would submit a wish for this, because your point is interesting. 

[Stavros_Rougas_EasyApps]

@jagercodelinks are now all automatically converted to smartlinks, the name of the page is the default. You are not the only one for which this is not ideal.

I agree with @Andy Gladstone's comment that changing it to card view is a good option.

Another is making them all standard URLs (i.e. showing https://) rather an smartlinks. We built an app called Link Editor to bulk change smarlinks to regular URLs (and the reverse).

[Stavros_Rougas_EasyApps]

@jagercodesorry I just read that you are on server, not cloud. If you migrate consider this option.