WebberZone Link Warnings

by Ajay

Description

WebberZone Link Warnings helps you warn users when links open in a new window or take them to external websites. It adds accessible indicators, confirmation dialogs, or redirect screens — helping you align with accessibility best practices without rewriting your content.

WebberZone Link Warnings uses a two-layer approach to process links across your entire site. For post content, it uses WordPress’s native WP_HTML_Tag_Processor class to efficiently parse and modify links at render time. Server-side filters also process widget output, navigation menus, comment text, and block-theme template parts when their General settings are enabled. A lightweight JavaScript scan handles remaining theme output after the page loads and applies the same rules. Your stored content remains untouched — the plugin only alters rendered output and does not interfere with REST API responses or admin editing screens.

Why warn users about external links?

target="_blank" can disorient screen reader users
Sudden context changes impact usability
Accessibility audits often recommend user warnings
Agencies and site owners often need documented user warnings during accessibility reviews

Key features

Multiple Warning Methods: Choose from inline indicators, modal dialogs, or redirect screens — or combine them
Flexible Scope: Target external links only, or external links plus all target="_blank" links
Customizable Indicators: Configure visual icons, text, or screen reader-only warnings
Modal Dialog: Show a confirmation dialog before users navigate to external sites with keyboard navigation and focus management
Dismissible Modals: Let repeat visitors tick “Don’t show again” so the modal is skipped for a session or for a set number of days, per destination domain or sitewide
Redirect Screen: Display an intermediate page with a configurable countdown before external navigation
Force External: Add a class to any link or wrapper element to force it to be treated as external — useful for tracking URLs or redirects that use internal paths
Automatic Link Attributes: Add nofollow, sponsored, ugc, noopener, noreferrer and target="_blank" to external links, affiliate links, or both — no post edits needed
Affiliate Link Marking: Flag a link or container with a class and give affiliate links their own attributes
Domain Exclusions: Allow trusted domains to treat them as internal links
Sitewide Coverage: Server-side filters process widget output, navigation menus, comment text, and block-theme template parts, while the JavaScript scan covers remaining theme output
Post Type Control: PHP-side processing is scoped to configured post types; JS scanning covers the full page regardless
Built to support accessibility best practices for external link behaviour in WordPress: Adds screen reader text, ARIA attributes, and keyboard-friendly modal confirmations
Setup Wizard: Get started quickly with a guided setup wizard on first activation
Template Override: Override the redirect screen template in your theme for full design control
RTL Support: Full right-to-left language support for all frontend and admin styles
Multisite Compatible: Network activate and configure per-site settings
Privacy Focused: Does not collect personal data or send link data to third-party services
Performance Optimized: Uses WordPress’s native WP_HTML_Tag_Processor class to process links at display time
Developer-Friendly: Filters and actions allow developers to customize behavior, exclude domains, and output

This plugin assists with user awareness of external navigation. It does not automatically make your website fully accessible or legally compliant.

How it works

After activation, the setup wizard guides you through the initial configuration. You can also configure the plugin at Settings > WebberZone Link Warnings.

Warning Methods:

Inline indicators only (visual and/or screen reader text)
Modal dialog (JavaScript-based confirmation)
Redirect screen (intermediate page with countdown)
Combined approach (inline + modal)
Combined approach (inline + redirect)

Link Scope:

External links only
External links and all target="_blank" links

Visual Indicators:

Icon only ()
Text only (customizable)
Icon + text
None (screen reader only)

Advanced Settings:

Custom modal messages and button text
Modal frequency, dismissal scope and “Don’t show again” label
Custom redirect page content and countdown duration
Link attributes for external and affiliate links (nofollow, sponsored, ugc, open in a new tab, noopener, noreferrer)
Affiliate link class and wrapper class (defaults: wzlw-affiliate, wzlw-affiliate-wrapper)
Domain exclusion list
Post type selection
Force-external class name (default: wzlw-force-external)

GDPR

WebberZone Link Warnings doesn’t collect personal data or send information to external services — making it GDPR-friendly by default.

You remain responsible for your site’s overall GDPR compliance.

Contribute

WebberZone Link Warnings is also available on Github.
So, if you’ve got a cool feature you’d like to implement in the plugin or a bug you’ve fixed, consider forking the project and sending me a pull request.

Bug reports are welcomed on GitHub. Please note that GitHub is not a support forum, and issues that aren’t suitably qualified as bugs will be closed.

Translations

WebberZone Link Warnings is available for translation directly on WordPress.org. Check out the official Translator Handbook to contribute.

Other Plugins by WebberZone

WebberZone Link Warnings is one of the many plugins developed by WebberZone. Check out our other plugins:

Contextual Related Posts – Display related posts on your WordPress blog and feed
Top 10 – Track daily and total visits to your blog posts and display the popular and trending posts
WebberZone Snippetz – The ultimate snippet manager for WordPress to create and manage custom HTML, CSS or JS code snippets
Knowledge Base – Create a knowledge base or FAQ section on your WordPress site
Better Search – Enhance the default WordPress search with contextual results sorted by relevance
Auto-Close – Automatically close comments, pingbacks and trackbacks and manage revisions
Popular Authors – Display popular authors in your WordPress widget
Followed Posts – Show a list of related posts based on what your users have read

Installation

WordPress install (the easy way)

Navigate to Plugins > Add New
Search for “WebberZone Link Warnings”
Click “Install Now” and then “Activate”

Manual install

Upload the webberzone-link-warnings folder to /wp-content/plugins/
Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
Go to Settings > WebberZone Link Warnings to configure

Screenshots

External link with icon indicator
Modal dialog warning before navigation

Faq

Does this plugin affect SEO?

Out of the box, no. WebberZone Link Warnings only modifies how links are displayed to users and never alters the href attribute or link structure.

If you enable the Link Attributes settings under Settings > WebberZone Link Warnings > Advanced, the plugin will add rel and target attributes to matching links, which is a deliberate SEO signal that you control. Attributes on links inside post content are written server-side and are present in the HTML that search engines download. Attributes on links elsewhere on the page — navigation menus, widgets, footers and other theme output — are applied by the JavaScript scan after the page loads, so they are only visible to crawlers that execute JavaScript.

Is it accessible?

Yes. The plugin adds screen reader text, ARIA attributes, and (for modal mode) keyboard navigation and focus management.

Does it work with multilingual sites?

Yes. WebberZone Link Warnings is translation-ready. It uses standard WordPress translation functions and works with popular multilingual plugins such as WPML and Polylang.

Does this work with page builders?

Yes. Post content is processed via standard WordPress filters (the_content and the_excerpt). In addition, a JavaScript scan runs after the page loads and processes any links not already handled by PHP — including output generated by page builders, theme templates, navigation menus, and widgets.

Can I customize the redirect screen template?

Yes. Copy the template file to your-theme/webberzone-link-warnings/redirect-screen.php to override the default redirect screen with your own design.

How can I force an internal link to be treated as external?

Add the class wzlw-force-external directly to the <a> tag:

<a href="/go/partner/" class="wzlw-force-external">Partner link</a>

To force all links inside a container, add wzlw-force-external-wrapper to the wrapper element instead:

<div class="wzlw-force-external-wrapper"><a href="/go/product-a/">Product A</a><a href="/go/product-b/">Product B</a></div>

Both class names are configurable under Settings > WebberZone Link Warnings > Advanced.

How do I add rel=”nofollow” or rel=”sponsored” automatically?

Go to Settings > WebberZone Link Warnings > Advanced and use the Link Attributes section. Tick any combination of rel="nofollow", rel="sponsored", rel="ugc", “Open in a new tab”, rel="noopener" and rel="noreferrer" under External Links, Affiliate Links, or both.

Attributes already on your links are kept. A link that carries rel="me author" becomes rel="me author nofollow" rather than losing its original values, and a link that already has rel="NoFollow" is not given a second copy — matching ignores case.

noopener and `noreferrer` are only added to links that actually open in a new tab, either because the link already has `target="_blank"` or because you enabled the new-tab option. Every option is off by default and nothing is added unless you tick it — the plugin has never rewritten `rel` on your links before this version.

They are deliberately separate options. Current browsers already imply noopener for target="_blank", so ticking it mainly satisfies security scanners and older browsers and costs you nothing. noreferrer is the one with a behavioural cost: it also stops the referrer being sent, so leave it unticked for affiliate links if your merchant relies on the referrer for attribution.

How do I mark affiliate links?

Add the class wzlw-affiliate directly to the <a> tag:

<a href="https://merchant.example.com/product" class="wzlw-affiliate">Buy now</a>

To mark every link inside a container, add wzlw-affiliate-wrapper to the wrapper element instead:

<div class="wzlw-affiliate-wrapper"><a href="https://merchant.example.com/a">Product A</a><a href="https://merchant.example.com/b">Product B</a></div>

Affiliate links receive both the External Links and Affiliate Links attribute sets. Both class names are configurable and accept comma-separated values under Settings > WebberZone Link Warnings > Advanced.

Note that marking a link as an affiliate link also treats it as external for warning purposes, exactly like the force-external class. An internal cloaked URL such as /go/product/ will show your configured modal, redirect screen or indicator, and a domain on your exclusion list will show a warning if you also give the link an affiliate class.

How can I prevent icons from appearing on specific links?

Add the class wzlw-no-icon to any link where you don’t want an icon to appear. For example:

<a href="https://example.com" class="wzlw-no-icon">Link without icon</a>

This suppresses the visual indicator (icon and/or text). The modal or redirect warning still applies if your warning method includes one. Screen reader text and ARIA attributes are still added.

To exclude all links inside a wrapper element (e.g. a navigation block or card), add the class wzlw-no-icon-wrapper to the containing element:

<div class="wzlw-no-icon-wrapper"><a href="https://example.com">Link without icon</a></div>

All links inside that wrapper will have their visual indicators suppressed.

Can I customize the icon that appears?

Yes. Go to Settings > WebberZone Link Warnings > Display tab and find the “Icon Style” dropdown. You can choose from several preset icons:

Arrow (North-East) – default
Arrow (Right)
⬈ Arrow (Up-Right)
⧉ External Link Symbol
🔗 Link Emoji
🌐 Globe Emoji
- Asterisk
Custom (enter your own)

Using Custom Icons: Select “Custom” and enter any Unicode symbol or emoji in the “Custom Icon” field. Examples: , ⇗, 🔗, 🌐, *, +

Can visitors stop the modal from showing every time?

Yes. Go to Settings > WebberZone Link Warnings > Display and set “Modal Frequency” to either “Once per browser session” or “Once every N days”. The modal then shows a “Don’t show again” checkbox. When a visitor ticks it and clicks Continue, the dismissal is remembered and the link behaves like a normal link on later clicks.

“Dismissal Scope” controls how far that goes. “Per destination domain” suppresses the modal for the domain the visitor dismissed and leaves every other external link alone. “All external links” suppresses it everywhere on the site.

Dismissals live in the visitor’s browser, in sessionStorage for the session option and localStorage for the N days option. No cookies are set and nothing is stored against a user account, so the setting is per browser rather than per person. Clearing site data resets it.

The default is “Always show the modal”, which is the behaviour from earlier versions.

Does this modify my database content?

No. The plugin only alters rendered output. Your stored content remains unchanged.

What happens if I deactivate the plugin?

Your links return to their original state. The plugin doesn’t modify your content in the database — it only changes how links are displayed.

Where do I report security bugs found in this plugin?

Please report security bugs found in the source code of the WebberZone Link Warnings plugin through the Patchstack Vulnerability Disclosure Program. The Patchstack team will assist you with verification, CVE assignment, and notify the developers of this plugin.

Reviews

Wow. This is an amazing accessbility and UX enhancement

By Ronald Huereca (ronalfy) on March 13, 2026

II needed a plugin to highlight external links on my site, have a nice appearance, and be accessible and not hinder the user. This plugin is perfect for that purpose.

I configured it to show an inline icon and a modal dialogue. The dialogue is great because it allows a user to stay on the site if desired and prevents accidental click-throughs. Perhaps in a later version, you can persist a small cookie and add a checkbox to skip the modal (from the user's perspective).

The icons on the links look great. I changed mine to a dark background and white foreground, using one of the supplied plugin icons. It looks great on buttons and also regular links.

I'm pleased that you can enable/disable this for post types. And the domain exclusions are a nice feature.

I did add some custom CSS as I thought the icon was a little too bunched up.

body .wzlw-icon {
	padding: 5px;
	border-radius: 4px;
}

Thanks for the great plugin Ajay.

Changelog

1.6.1

Release date: 13 September 2026

Fixed

Redirect screens triggered deprecated header and footer template notices on block themes and other themes without header.php or footer.php.

1.6.0

Release date: 6 September 2026
Release post: https://webberzone.com/announcements/link-warnings-v1-6/

Added

Added warnings for configured downloadable file extensions, including files hosted on the current site.
Added Downloadable File Extensions, Download Modal Title, and Download Modal Message settings.
Added a distinct download indicator icon and ignored query strings and fragments when matching file extensions.
Added server-side processing for widgets, navigation menus, comments, and block-theme template parts, with all four sources enabled by default under General > External Content.

Changed

Marked excluded domains in the markup so the JavaScript scan honored the same exclusions as PHP.
Stopped activation from writing a duplicate copy of the default settings.

Security

Hardened modal and redirect scripts against malformed link markup and mismatched destination URLs.

Fixed

External links without a scheme, such as //example.com/page, were treated as internal and received no warning.
Redirect destinations containing &, #, or + failed signature checks and sent visitors to the home page.
Force-external links and internal target="_blank" links sent visitors to the home page instead of the redirect warning screen.
No-icon, force-external, or affiliate wrappers containing an <iframe>, <script>, <textarea>, or similar element suppressed warnings on subsequent links.
Links with an uppercase </A> closing tag received no icon or screen reader text.

Earlier versions

For the changelog of earlier versions, please refer to the releases page on GitHub.