if you were to send me a hyper link here in mingle2 it would take me to the PHP.net download page but if it was in say a Gmail email then it would go where it should. this started a few months ago. I am not a developer. I have tried multiple browsers and laptops I get the same results. is there anything I can do to fix this or is it the ones making the links that have to solve the issue?

The server here probably wont accept

more than likely you actually mean html5

look what all the other links are ...address that you cut and paste

I became curious to try any hyperlink, e.g. https://www.python.org/
and see where it links to when clicking on it.

Well in my particular case: no where, because it is not displayed as a hyperlink.

http://www.python.org/

You have to use BBCodes to make your link hot. BBCodes can be found pinned at the top of the Help Forum https://mingle2.com/topic/199646

Thanks, and it took me where it is supposed to go.

Ah, so simply using the HTML tags.
That clears that up. BBCode confused me, hihi.
As did the word "hyperlink" btw. I've not seen that used in yonks. "URL" is common these days. Or "link".
I still don't know how you'd get to PHP, but alas...

Do BBCodes also work in the mail system here?

Yes

The img bbcode did not display a jpg image or a hyperlink of it in a message of my mail list.

i was using mingle2 as an example of a message site as opposed to a email site.

The BBCodes work on both the forums and messaging service provided.

you are linking a web address that is not the same as a hyper-lynk. hyper-links hide the web address so i am not sure if that is the same thing or not.

no i mean a hyper-link. i am not trying to insert one i am talking about ones that are sent to me and mingle2 was just an example of a site that is used to send messages not a site used to send emails. the ones i get in an email work the way they should if i get it in a message it goes to the php.net download page.

In BBCode the tags of the BBCode tells the forum software its a link.
[] the brackets separate the code
url opens the code when enclosed within the brackets
the actual url = http whatever
is between the opening bracketed code and the closing bracketed code.

The closing tag is always /url or /img or /b or /i or /u

I can break the code by insterting a space...
[u rl]http ://mingle2.com/forum/recent_posts[/ur l]
The actual url is https://mingle2.com/forum/recent_posts

If I want to hyperlink that address

[ur l=htt p://mingle2.com/forum/recent_posts]Recent Forum Posts[/u rl]
Recent Forum Posts

In firefox and chrome there are extensions which automatically insert bbcode. Its called BBCode WebEX.
You still need to remove the 's' from the url to get it to work at M2 most times.

On image codes, there is no need to remove the 's'.

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/msaroff/bbCodeWebEx/master/Screen_Shots/BBCodeXtra/Menu_Example.png

[im g]https://raw.githubusercontent.com/msaroff/bbCodeWebEx/master/Screen_Shots/BBCodeXtra/Menu_Example.png[/i mg]

I have tried and broken the img BBCode like this one:
[im g]https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FASFRHcUUAMReOd?format=jpg[/i mg]
in the mailing section, but have not seen the image.

Let's try the unbroken one:

But again it did not work (I did not see the image or the hyperlink of it) when I tried it in a mailing message.

you have come the closest to explaining what i a facing. again though i am not trying to create these. i am trying to understand why just a few months ago i did not have this problem.

the problem appears mostly on online dating sites. i will get a message from someone that will say: "i don't use this site as much meet me over here" where the word here is the clickable link. and that will take me to the php.net download page. where as when i get a email that will say "get your free report here" again the word here is the clickable link. yet that one will take me to the report as it should. being that this has been going on for a couple months now makes me think it is the way my system is processing the links otherwise the sender would have been informed that their links are not working i am purely guessing that they would have know by now also it is not just one site that this happens on. that eliminates it being a site error.

something i had not thought to check is that when you right click the link and select copy link address that it would give you the actual address and not what ever word or phrase they had use to hide it. that still does not solve my problem though there is a web site name https://optimizerbox.com followed by a long series of numbers and letters. which when i left off the numbers and letters and just used the web address it took me to the php.net download page. so i guess the problem is with optimizerbox and not my system. i think?