Title: NoFollow Bug
Last modified: August 30, 2016

---

# NoFollow Bug

 *  Resolved [DevynCJohnson](https://wordpress.org/support/users/devyncjohnson/)
 * (@devyncjohnson)
 * [11 years ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/nofollow-bug/)
 * I recently noticed that all of my links that reference different parts of my 
   website (in-bound links) have the “nofollow” attribute. That is not supposed 
   to happen. Even if I hard-code a link to a page on my website, the “nofollow”
   attribute is still being added.
 * For instance, on [http://dcjtech.info/topic/general-unixoid-topics/](http://dcjtech.info/topic/general-unixoid-topics/),
   there is a list of links that all reference pages on the same domain (dcjtech.
   info). Some of the links were hard-coded using TinyMCE and the others were not
   hard-coded. However, all of the links in the “forum topic” have the “nofollow”
   attribute. If I edit the post and use the “text” tab, I can see the “a” tags 
   for my hard-coded links, but none of them have the “nofollow” attribute.
 * The “External Links” plugin should ignore hard-coded links (i.e. “a” tags) and
   links to dcjtech.info on dcjtech.info should not be listed as external links 
   and given the “nofollow” attribute.
 * The only thing that changed on my web-server between now and the last bug report
   I filed was the External Links plugin update.
 * [https://wordpress.org/plugins/sem-external-links/](https://wordpress.org/plugins/sem-external-links/)

Viewing 9 replies - 1 through 9 (of 9 total)

 *  Thread Starter [DevynCJohnson](https://wordpress.org/support/users/devyncjohnson/)
 * (@devyncjohnson)
 * [11 years ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/nofollow-bug/#post-6616967)
 * This bug is only seen on bbPress forum posts, but not WordPress “pages” such 
   as [http://dcjtech.info/guides/](http://dcjtech.info/guides/)
 *  Plugin Author [Mike Koepke](https://wordpress.org/support/users/mike_koepke/)
 * (@mike_koepke)
 * [11 years ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/nofollow-bug/#post-6617083)
 * bbPress automatically adds nofollow to all links in posts
 * [https://codex.bbpress.org/getting-started/forum-moderation/dealing-with-spam/](https://codex.bbpress.org/getting-started/forum-moderation/dealing-with-spam/)
 *  Thread Starter [DevynCJohnson](https://wordpress.org/support/users/devyncjohnson/)
 * (@devyncjohnson)
 * [11 years ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/nofollow-bug/#post-6617097)
 * That is interesting. I never had that happen before. I have always inspected 
   the HTML code of my pages to ensure that everything is operating as expected.
   I will figure out what changed to cause that issue. Thanks for the link. I would
   have never suspected bbPress to be the cause of the problem.
 *  Thread Starter [DevynCJohnson](https://wordpress.org/support/users/devyncjohnson/)
 * (@devyncjohnson)
 * [11 years ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/nofollow-bug/#post-6617107)
 * I am currently waiting for an answer on the bbPress forums ( [https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/nofollow-on-internal-links/](https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/nofollow-on-internal-links/)).
   However, in the meantime, I disabled bbPress’s ability to add “nofollow” to links
   by commenting out the below lines in bbPress’s code.
 *     ```
       //add_filter( 'bbp_get_reply_content', 'bbp_rel_nofollow',   50   );
       //add_filter( 'bbp_get_topic_content', 'bbp_rel_nofollow',   50   );
       ```
   
 * However, the “nofollow” attribute is still being given to the links (example –
   [http://dcjtech.info/topic/general-unixoid-topics/](http://dcjtech.info/topic/general-unixoid-topics/)).
   Are you sure that nothing was accidentally changed in “External Links”? I did
   not have this issue until after I updated the plugin and nothing else has changed
   since that time. True, it is logical to suspect bbPress since links on WordPress
   pages (like [http://dcjtech.info/guides/](http://dcjtech.info/guides/) ) are 
   not effected by this “nofollow” behavior. However, I disabled bbPress’s ability
   to apply the “nofollow” attribute, so the behavior should have stopped.
 * Once I officially find the source of the problem and apply a working solution,
   I will be sure to let you know.
 *  Thread Starter [DevynCJohnson](https://wordpress.org/support/users/devyncjohnson/)
 * (@devyncjohnson)
 * [11 years ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/nofollow-bug/#post-6617181)
 * Why is it that “sem-external-links.php” never loads or uses “sem-follow_comment.
   php”? I noticed that none of the PHP files use “sem-follow_comment.php”.
 *  Thread Starter [DevynCJohnson](https://wordpress.org/support/users/devyncjohnson/)
 * (@devyncjohnson)
 * [11 years ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/nofollow-bug/#post-6617185)
 * As a temporary (but poor fix) the below code can be added to “functions.php”.
 *     ```
       //Remove nofollow
       function rm_nofollow($txt){
           $txt=str_replace(' rel="nofollow"','',$txt);
           return $txt;
       }
       add_filter('bbp_get_topic_content','rm_nofollow',20);
       add_filter('bbp_get_reply_content','rm_nofollow',20);
       ```
   
 *  Plugin Author [Mike Koepke](https://wordpress.org/support/users/mike_koepke/)
 * (@mike_koepke)
 * [11 years ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/nofollow-bug/#post-6617194)
 * You can try and put in a Trac enhancement ticket against bbpress to allow configuration
   of whether content links can be followed or not. As the intention in their implementation
   is to prevent being a comment/post spammer magnet, I doubt they will add the 
   enhancement.
 * The fact that they do provide a filter to alter the contents is precisely why
   they added the filter. For cases like yours where you really do want all links
   entered by users to be followed.
 *  Plugin Author [Mike Koepke](https://wordpress.org/support/users/mike_koepke/)
 * (@mike_koepke)
 * [11 years ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/nofollow-bug/#post-6617198)
 * The follow comments functionality is no longer used. I merged in another plugin
   but it was a poor idea. Once Apply Globally is on, it is extremely difficult 
   to now parse page content and determine it’s meaning. So it is just an unused
   file left in the plugin.
 *  Plugin Author [Mike Koepke](https://wordpress.org/support/users/mike_koepke/)
 * (@mike_koepke)
 * [11 years ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/nofollow-bug/#post-6617199)
 * and since the intent of the DoFollow was to readd follow/remove no-follow and
   External Link’s main goal is to make all links NoFollow, they were sort of conflicting
   with each other’s purpose. If WP makes all comments nofollow, then we are already
   in the right direction.
 * You are seeing this with bbpress making outgoing links nofollow.

Viewing 9 replies - 1 through 9 (of 9 total)

 The topic ‘NoFollow Bug’ is closed to new replies.

 * ![](https://s.w.org/plugins/geopattern-icon/sem-external-links.svg)
 * [External Links](https://wordpress.org/plugins/sem-external-links/)
 * [Frequently Asked Questions](https://wordpress.org/plugins/sem-external-links/#faq)
 * [Support Threads](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/sem-external-links/)
 * [Active Topics](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/sem-external-links/active/)
 * [Unresolved Topics](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/sem-external-links/unresolved/)
 * [Reviews](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/sem-external-links/reviews/)

## Tags

 * [Flaw](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/flaw/)

 * 9 replies
 * 2 participants
 * Last reply from: [Mike Koepke](https://wordpress.org/support/users/mike_koepke/)
 * Last activity: [11 years ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/nofollow-bug/#post-6617199)
 * Status: resolved