Add target="_blank" to external links

[jorgegarv]

Checklist

• I have read and accepted the contributing guidelines.

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe

Currently, the theme’s HTML anchors ( tags) do not include target="_blank" for external links, which forces users to leave the site when clicking. This affects:

Social media links in footer/sidebar.

Any external URL in posts/pages.

Describe the solution you'd like

I've developed a lightweight Jekyll plugin (external_blank.rb) that automatically adds:

target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"

to all external links, with:
✅ Zero config – Works out-of-the-box
✅ Selective targeting – Only modifies external links (checks href for http:///https://)
✅ Live tested – Successfully implemented on my blog

Implementation:

Add this to _plugins/external_blank.rb:

# _plugins/external_blank.rb
module Jekyll
  module ExternalLinks
    class Processor
      def process(content)
        return content if !content.is_a?(String)
        
        content.gsub(/<a\s+(.*?)>/m) do |match|
          attrs = $1
          
          next match if attrs.include?('target=') || attrs.include?('href="#') || attrs.include?('mailto:')
          
          if attrs.include?('href="http')
            "<a #{attrs} target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">"
          else
            match
          end
        end
      end
    end
  end
end

Jekyll::Hooks.register :pages, :post_render do |page|
  processor = Jekyll::ExternalLinks::Processor.new
  page.output = processor.process(page.output)
end

Jekyll::Hooks.register :posts, :post_render do |post|
  processor = Jekyll::ExternalLinks::Processor.new
  post.output = processor.process(post.output)
end

Describe alternatives you've considered

No response

Additional context

No response

[wermos]

A plugin for this already exists: https://github.com/keithmifsud/jekyll-target-blank. It works fine in my experience.