Petition to remove the Inline Linking tool from WP 4.5

@aumw-jay
Thank you very much, now we’re getting somewhere!

I can reliably reproduce the problems using the plugin mentioned, testing a few other plugins that are meant to do the same and the few I did try worked fine.

Are any of you others experiencing issues using any plugins that interact with the link box in any way (adding extra options for example) ?

For those using the plugin mentioned by @aumw-jay, it is overwriting the core JavaScript and causing some headaches because of that (there are better ways to achieve what it tries to do, and plugins that are both updated and compatible with 4.5 for this purpose)

Yes! That was it, thanks so much — I also had that plugin, but had been using it for so long that I forgot it was there. Disabling it solves the issue of the toolbar staying up.

It does not, however, solve the usability issue of multiple extra clicks involved when you need to check nofollow and / or open new tab boxes. I’d also love to see them on the toolbar if we need to live with inline.

Maybe Open In New Tab can be useful but adding nofollow is plugin territory, not core. Maybe someone can develop a plugin for that, just like there are for the old interface. Glad to know it’s working now.

@mashupmom
https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/nofollow-for-external-link/
Adds nofollow automatically without you needing to do any extra clicks ??

I’m not using that plugin, never heard of it. Still having issues. I’m getting around it by just using the HTML tab.

@hollyjahangiri
But what plugins and theme -are- you using, what browser, what Operating System, help us help you ??

Have you tried if it’s reproducable with all plugins disabled and a default theme such as Twenty Sixteen?

What about the browser extensions bit I mentioned, or antiviruses?

I’m using Windows 10, Chrome, and I’m not disabling my antivirus. I shouldn’t have to, and I have no intention of doing so. I understand this is free and open source, but perhaps some of us didn’t sign up to be testers because (a) we don’t have the time; and (b) we don’t have the expertise – we assumed these bugs would’ve been worked out before release. That you have so many people describing the same behavior should be enough to root cause it and fix it – OR, provide a mechanism to disable the inline link editor and revert to the old one. That’s it.

Otherwise, I DO know HTML and CSS well enough to use that.

Oh, by the way, YouTube embeds (if you want to specify the width or any other custom parameters) don’t work well anymore, either. But I’ve found a workaround for that, too. The workaround I really want right now is to revert to the previous release.

Okay, on the latest post, the inline box DOES go away. (No idea if that’s permanent or just a fluke, as nothing’s changed that I know of.)

[UPDATE: It goes away, sometimes, if a link is successfully added.]

BUT, if I click the Settings icon and enter a URL from there, then click Update, it loses the link altogether.

[UPDATE: This appears to happen only on posts that have not been saved – i.e. new posts that have not been saved one or more times.]

@hollyjahangiri

With the problems you are describing piling up, I am going to safely deduct that this is not a Core problem, but a plugin or theme problem on your end.

So many people are describing that they’ve fixed it by disabling the plugins causing it on their end, which are plugins not yet updated to work with 4.5 and are all (so far) overwriting core files in some manner (which is bad to begin with) and thus isn’t forward compatible.

The only way to truly pinpoint the problem is by disabling plugins and using a default theme (such as Twenty Sixteen) once that is done, enable plugins one at a time until the problem reoccurs and then you’ll know what plugin is causing it.

I know we’ve recommended this approach before, and we’ll keep recommending it because it is the -only- way to troubleshoot remotely and sort it out, if this isn’t for you I highly recommend considering jobs.wordpress.net and getting a professional to take a look at it for you because as I mentioned, it isn’t a WordPress Core issue at this time (even if we considered it a possibility until we found the root cause for the others).

Here is one thing I did to prevent these _wp_link_placeholder links from showing up publically..

/*
 * Never allow link placeholders to show up
 */
function askapache_filter_link_placeholder( $content ) {
	if ( isset( $content[10] ) && strpos( $content, '_wp_link_placeholder' ) !== false ) {
		// remove links to /_wp_link_placeholder by replacing them with WP_SITEURL
		return preg_replace( '#_wp_link_placeholder#', WP_SITEURL, $content );
	}
	return $content;
}
add_filter( 'the_content', 'askapache_filter_link_placeholder' );
add_filter( 'the_content_feed', 'askapache_filter_link_placeholder' );
add_filter( 'get_the_content', 'askapache_filter_link_placeholder' );
add_filter( 'the_excerpt', 'askapache_filter_link_placeholder' );
add_filter( 'content_save_pre', 'askapache_filter_link_placeholder' );
add_filter( 'excerpt_save_pre', 'askapache_filter_link_placeholder' );

And then in robots.txt

Disallow: /_wp_link_placeholder

I’m joining the club disliking the new feature. ?? Buggy!

– sometimes the editor box goes away, sometimes not – and the only thing I can do to make it disappear and allow me to go on writing is to save the draft. At which time it loses the link I had just entered.

-I need to ‘open link in a new window’ and the only option for me now is the extra click to open the old editor dialog box – which is now NOT the complete old editor about half the time. (The original had allowed for editing the text that appears in the link, but now it only SOMEtimes comes up.) I don’t get why all this happens only sometimes.

*sigh* I use tons of links in every post and this is adding SO MUCH TIME to my work. I hope there will be an option to remove this feature at some point.

Hi @opwritehome,

It sounds to me like you have a plugin that is interfering with the editor, have you tried disabling your plugins to see if the buggy behavior disappears, alternatively you could share with us what plugins you are running on your site and we’d be able to look for a pattern here.

I know with me, disabling plug-ins and all themes but the default WordPress ones didn’t work. What did work was backing up the DB to a local machine, changing instances, reuploading the DB with everything switched off but the themes (I can discount our theme being the issue) and starting again.

I then did as you suggested, Marius, and switched on each plug-in one by one. The one that gave me a WSOD was Jetpack, and I had to delete that. I’m currently working with Jeremy on another thread to see why that is.

I am quite unhappy with the new inline link feature. It is buggy (does not go away sometimes und shows some _wp_wwhatever text), and it breaks my workflow in different ways. The most important: I am using a plugin that allows me to type in a term and then delivers search engine results to that term. That way I can quickly link book titles, movies or actors to imdb or Wikipedia. That is a huge help in everyday work. And it is completely broken by this highly unnesseccary “inline linking” crap.

I also opt for an option to disable this bulls… ahem … “improvement”.

Please show me how to disable this feature. Thanks.