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Do I need to add the "https" or "http" protocol when inserting links in articles?



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Alexander Popa

Zendesk Engineering

Edited Jun 18, 2024


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In short: You need to enter http://, https://, etc. as the protocol when adding links through the Insert/edit Link prompt. WWW. alone will not work.

It appears that the current Help Center behavior for links is this:

  • If you enter http:// or https:// into the Insert/edit Link prompt, the link will work as expected.
  • If you enter just the domain, or the domain with a www. prefix (e.g. aol.com or www.aol.com), Help Center will interpret this as https://{subdomain}.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/{link}

This is briefly explained in Inserting and editing links in articles. Those who are unfamiliar with the href property, or are new to working with WYSIWYG editors, may think that links w/o the protocol should just work.

In the above example, using www.aol.com would result in the link being interpreted as 

https://{subdomain}.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/www.aol.com. This can easily lead to broken links in the Help Center for those who may not know to add the prefix.

Since non-heading anchors generally need to be added manually, it would seem that http:// or https:// is no longer a recommendation, but a requirement, for links to work as expected.

I've posted a feedback request to provide for a modal/warning/updated language/etc. for this situation.

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