External Links

External links in the content area receive a small arrow icon and open in a new browser tab. Disabled by default.

Enable the plugin

sarde.yaml

plugins:
  enabled:
    - search
    - seo
    - sitemap
    # ... other default plugins
    - external-links

How it works

On page load, the plugin scans all links inside the main content area. Links pointing to a different hostname than the current site are treated as external and receive:

• An arrow icon appended after the link text (inline SVG, sized to match the surrounding text).
• target="_blank" to open in a new tab.
• rel="noopener noreferrer" for security (prevents reverse tabnabbing and referrer leakage).

Links in the header, sidebar, footer, and navigation are not processed. Only links inside the main content article are affected.

Configuration

sarde.yaml

plugins:
  config:
    external-links:
      show_icon: true
      open_in_new_tab: true
      exclude_domains: "github.com, docs.example.com"

Excluding domains

Use exclude_domains to prevent specific external hostnames from receiving the icon and new-tab behavior:

sarde.yaml

plugins:
  config:
    external-links:
      exclude_domains: "github.com, docs.example.com"

Domain matching is exact by hostname. Excluding example.com does not exclude www.example.com or docs.example.com. List each subdomain separately if needed.

Injection rule

This plugin activates on every page (always). It runs once at page load and does not re-process dynamically inserted links.

Edge cases

• Anchor links (#section), mailto:, tel:, and javascript: URLs are never treated as external.
• Links without an href attribute are ignored entirely.
• When open_in_new_tab is false, neither target nor rel attributes are modified.
• The icon is hidden on image links, link buttons, link cards, and navigation links via CSS, even if the plugin's JavaScript were to process them.
• The icon inherits the link's text color via currentColor and dims to 50% opacity, brightening to 80% on hover.
• Setting show_icon: false and open_in_new_tab: false effectively disables the plugin without removing it from plugins.enabled.