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. For everything else — navigation menus, footers, sidebars, widgets, and theme output — a lightweight JavaScript scan runs after the page loads and applies the same rules. It adds appropriate ARIA attributes, visual indicators, and optional JavaScript-based warnings based on your configuration. 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
- 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 affiliate links or tracking URLs that use internal paths
- Domain Exclusions: Allow trusted domains to treat them as internal links
- Sitewide Coverage: Links in navigation menus, footers, sidebars, widgets, and theme output are processed alongside post content
- 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_Processorclass 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
- Custom redirect page content and countdown duration
- 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
