# Using an external link with r:navigation

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/using-an-external-link-with-r-navigation/142898>\
**Category:** Radiant CMS\
**Created:** [July 13, 2008, 1:25am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/using-an-external-link-with-r-navigation/142898 "2008-07-13T01:25:29Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![squeegy](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/dec6dc/32.png) [@squeegy](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/squeegy)\
**Post date:** [July 13, 2008, 1:25am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/using-an-external-link-with-r-navigation/142898/1 "2008-07-13T01:25:29Z")

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My client wants a link in their nav that is outbound. I have their nav  
setup through the \<r:navigation\> tag, but there is a problem using  
absolute URLs

\<r:navigation urls=“About: /about | Foo: [http://foo.com](http://foo.com)”\>

This generates a link that does go to the right place, but the display  
text is:

“Foo: http”

Is there a trick to getting this to work right? or is this just not  
something this tag supports right now?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![squeegy](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/dec6dc/32.png) [@squeegy](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/squeegy)\
**Post date:** [July 13, 2008, 4:28pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/using-an-external-link-with-r-navigation/142898/2 "2008-07-13T16:28:36Z")

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Alex,

Yes, it is unsupported. Since that item will never be selected,  
however, you could make it its own link sitting by itself. I know  
that’s not the ideal solution, but I’ve done it several times in  
different circumstances. Depending on the order of your URLs, you may  
have to break it into two \<r:navigation\> tags.

Sean

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![squeegy](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/dec6dc/32.png) [@squeegy](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/squeegy)\
**Post date:** [April 18, 2010, 2:06am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/using-an-external-link-with-r-navigation/142898/3 "2010-04-18T02:06:03Z")

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Decimal-Entity Notation worked for me:

\<r:navigation urls=“Home: /|Photographs:  
http://www.externalsite.com”\>

A double slash seems to work too:

\<r:navigation urls=“Home: /|Photographs: [//www.externalsite.com](https://www.externalsite.com)”\>

But it shows up in the HTML that way, it’s not very standard, and I  
didn’t test it in all browsers.