Should support external links

[chillu]

Banners can be linked to internal pages. They should support external links as well. That's pretty basic, right? I'm a bit surprised that this issue exists to be honest.

Somewhat related to the discussion around [https://github.com//issues/10](Should BlockLinkField be pulled out into its own module).

IMHO we should either build out https://github.com/gorriecoe/silverstripe-linkfield, or build something along the same lines (if there's very good reasons that we can't contribute to existing modules). Any time something involves links, it should be very easy to link to both internal pages and external URLs.

/cc @clarkepaul @brynwhyman

[robbieaverill]

The context around why this exists is that we originally implemented it in a bad way by reusing global state TicyMCE plugins from the content field and didn’t want to make it worse by doing it for all of the link options.

I think it’s now self contained so if we want to build it out more we could. The link modals are still pretty coupled to TinyMCE though so if I’m wrong then we should decouple them first

[chillu]

I've created a wider discussion on how to proceed with this in terms of a reuseable link moudle: https://forum.silverstripe.org/t/new-links-module/1642

[clarkepaul]

I think this is an existing issue @chillu silverstripe/silverstripe-elemental#589, happy for you to close one of them if they are the same.
Designs were here https://projects.invisionapp.com/dsm/silver-stripe/silver-stripe/asset/components/5c4e6d24f3ad3830147691f6

This is one of those things which was unfortunately pushed back, I've had already marked it as top priority in our block work.

[chillu]

Happy to have the discussion over at silverstripe/silverstripe-elemental#589, but I'd prefer if this issue stays open since it communicates a pretty big limitation of this particular block. As a dev choosing blocks, I usually look through open issues to determine the known limitations, and they'd be too hidden in the "parent repo". Think of it this way: You get to close two issues at once when it's fixed ;)

[ScopeyNZ]

I would say that the discussion in silverstripe/silverstripe-elemental#589 actually belongs here as this is the repo that has the code!

The eventual fix here seems like it might be some form of supported links module in the near future which we can swap out for.

[altwohill]

Adding to this, it's not currently possible to have anchor links either