One link, every format
The same link often ends up in several places: a web page, a GitHub README, a forum post and a plain-text email. Each uses a different syntax. This hyperlink generator writes all of them from a single URL and link text, so you do not have to remember which brackets go where.
Example output
HTML:
<a href="https://example.com/docs" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Read the documentation</a>
Markdown:
[Read the documentation](https://example.com/docs)
BBCode:
[url=https://example.com/docs]Read the documentation[/url]
Plain text:
Read the documentation (https://example.com/docs)Where each format is used
| Format | Used in |
|---|---|
| HTML | Websites, CMS source views, HTML emails, email signatures |
| Markdown | GitHub and GitLab READMEs, issues, documentation sites, note-taking apps, chat tools that support Markdown |
| BBCode | phpBB, MyBB, vBulletin and other forums |
| Plain text | Text emails, SMS, commit messages, anywhere formatting is not supported |
Hyperlink generator format details
- HTML – attribute values are escaped. With "new tab" enabled,
target="_blank"andrel="noopener noreferrer"are added; nofollow is appended torelwhen selected. - Markdown – when you select Markdown alone, square brackets in the text are escaped, a closing parenthesis in the URL is encoded as
%29so it cannot end the link early, and a title becomes[text](url "title"). - BBCode – uses the widely supported
[url=…]text[/url]form. - Plain text – puts the URL in parentheses after the text, the conventional form for text emails.
Markdown and BBCode have no standard way to open links in a new tab or add rel attributes; the platform decides. Those options therefore affect only the HTML version.
What the rel values in the HTML link do
- noopener stops the page opened in a new tab from accessing your page through
window.opener. Current browsers already behave this way fortarget="_blank", but the attribute keeps older browsers safe too. - noreferrer also hides the
Refererheader, so the destination site's analytics count the visit as direct traffic rather than a referral from you. Leave the new-tab option off if you want referrals to show up. - nofollow asks search engines not to pass ranking credit through the link. Google has treated it as a hint rather than a strict rule since 2019, and it also recognises
sponsoredfor paid links andugcfor user-generated content.
For ordinary links to your own pages, none of these are needed.
Common mistakes
The most frequent Markdown link problem is a space between the brackets and the parentheses: [text] (url) is not a link. In BBCode, forgetting the = in [url=…] produces a link whose text is the URL. And in HTML, an unescaped & in a query string usually works but is technically invalid; the generator escapes it as & for you.
Tips
- Use descriptive link text instead of a vague "here"; it helps screen-reader users and gives the destination context.
- Encode spaces and special characters in URLs with the URL encoder before generating the link.
- Need more HTML options such as inline color or the sponsored attribute? Use the HTML link generator.
- Preview Markdown containing your link in the Markdown viewer.
Links are generated locally in your browser.