edit: editing this where someone doesn't waste time reading a long post I have the answer for. lol.

Summary: I was wanting to add an external url in a template for my sidebar and I tried tons and tons of ways and it kept adding my forum site url to it. It turns out I accidentally had a form field as a Text input instead of Url, so there was no protocol added in.

 

link with an external url to work in my sidebar

 

 

 but this is in the acp

Sidebar? ACP?

Decide!

Stop trolling. When I said acp, I meant "it's in a template" rather than in a php file.

Also, can I somehow get a setting into the following without having to first set a variable?

<img src='{file="

I havent tested yhet, but a lot of times settings. doesn't work and in some areas setting="" should be used and it's geting confusing.

 

Stop trolling.

Trolling. Me, again, trying to help you and again you being a *@#%&#&¨&*&#&¨#!

So &*#%¨@% your URL! ??

In case I was confusing on my last post about a file:

{{$img = settings.some_name;}}

what I meant is I had to do that because I couldnt figure out the syntax for getting the setting into the file="" and I'm tired of playing around trying different things. lol.

Thanks to newbie, I got my original issue fixed... Somehow I had forgotten to change my settings page inputs to Url ones. I was entering the url in a Text input so it wasn't adding in the protocol.

I had gone all through my files making them Url inputs recently, but I must have totally forgotten about my settings form.