How do I make my links in Wordpress not add itself to the existing URL? - wordpress

Question

I'm guessing there is a simple solution to this, but I can't seem to get my phrasing right when searching for it, so I'll post it here.
I have some links that look like this in Wordpress:
<a target="_blank" href="<?php echo get_post_meta($post->ID, $prefix.'hjemmeside', true); ?>"><?php echo get_post_meta($post->ID, $prefix.'hjemmeside', true); ?></a>
Just regular links that I echo in my single template to create user homepage/facebook etc. The problem is when you click it, the link will just adds itself to the end of the URL:
Example:
wordpress.com/single
when clicking the link:
wordpress.com/single/www.homepagelink.com
Thanks for any help :)

Answer 1

My guess is that wordpress isn't adding anything. If you have the URL without preceding http:// in the custom field it is shown that way by the browser. If you check the generated source code with your browser you will find the code like this:
<a target="_blank" href="www.homepagelink.com">www.homepagelink.com</a>
Without http:// or other valid URL schema this is interpreted by the browser as a relative link and handled as such.
You can either add the http:// in the field value or you place a wrapper function in the functions.php of your theme to make sure it is always interpreted as URL regardless what was put in the field.
function my_field_link($id, $field) {
$value = get_post_meta($id, $field, true);
if (substr($value, 0, 7) == "http://") return $value;
return "http://" . $value;
}
Then you can call this function like this:
<a target="_blank" href="<?php echo my_field_link($post->ID, prefix.'hjemmeside'); ?>"><?php echo my_field_link($post->ID, prefix.'hjemmeside'); ?></a>
Now the link will always start with http://.
Note: If you expect to have other URL schemas in use (https, ftp, scp, etc.) you should adapt the function accordingly.