What's Up With Url Modification?

[tarnalberry]

I tried linking to Open Original Shared Link in a post (Open Original Shared Link), and the link wouldn't work.

At first, I tried using the macro: highlighting the phrase I had typed and wanted to link, then selecting the macro, and entering the url (Open Original Shared Link .com/Pyrex-Digital-Probe-Thermometer-Timer/dp/B00004RC4R/sr=8-1/qid=1165081574/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-4501017-8361707?ie=UTF8&s=home-garden) in the pop-up window. If I did that, however, it would return a spurious html tag. What should have read, in the source:

<A href = "Open Original Shared Link .com/Pyrex-Digital-Probe-Thermometer-Timer/dp/B00004RC4R/sr=8-1/qid=1165081574/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-4501017-8361707?ie=UTF8&s=home-garden">probe thermometer</A>

instead read

<A href = "Open Original Shared Link .com/Pyrex-Digital-Probe-Thermometer-Timer/dp/B00004RC4R/sr=8-1/qid=1165081574/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-4501017-8361707?ie=UTF8&s=home-garden" target = "blank">probe thermometer</A>

(notice the extra space after 'amazon' and before '.com' and the 'target = "blank"', which causes the link to go nowhere.

I tried changing this manually, removing the space and the blank target, which I had never entered, but it would always pop up.

This doesn't happen when I link to the celiac board, and doesn't happen when I link to my own website.

So what's up with links to thermometers on Amazon? Or, as apparent at the top of this post, to *any* link to Amazon?

nice... you're filter adds a space between amazon and .com even in the text I enter manually, when not a hyperlink, and just trying to demonstrate the problem.

faaaaabulous.

[Michi8]

I ran into the same problem when I tried linking to Amazon in another thread (linking to Dr Green's book.) There was no way I could get it to work. Because I've not had problems linking other books from there, I suspected it was because the book being sold at Amazon was in competition with that be sold through the Celiac.com store.

Michelle

[tarnalberry]

I wonder if this... thoroughness has been added recently, because I can't even link to the main site, and I some how doubt that a probe therometer is a competitive gluten-free niche item....

[Michi8]

  tarnalberry said:

I wonder if this... thoroughness has been added recently, because I can't even link to the main site, and I some how doubt that a probe therometer is a competitive gluten-free niche item....

I doubt that as well. (I had responded without noticing what you were specifically linking to.) Does the filter affect other online retail links as well? Or is it just Amazon?

Michelle

[Scott Adams]

Unfortunately Amazon has used this board to publicize and create backlinks to various parts of their online store. Other companies that have done this in the past have a total ban on their company name or url even appearing here--they are filtered to "Lame Advertisement." I did not do this in their case because they have such a big following, but their links will not work here because of this--it has nothing to do with what they are selling, only the way they have gone about publicizing their goods (one of my other freinds who hosts another forum has had the same thing happen on his).

Take care,

Scott