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.

14 minutes ago, Midnight Modding said:

link with an external url to work in my sidebar

 

14 minutes ago, Midnight Modding said:

 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.

9 minutes ago, Midnight Modding said:

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.