Link One Story to Another fail

[all_ways_bi]

My latest story had a link in the first graph explaining this was a side story to a previously published story.

I followed the instructions from an August 2025 post by LifeStyle66, also confirmed by TheLobster and
the How to Format A Story with HTML by FrancesScott and tested it in Draft before sending.

From Lifestyle66: +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The HTML code is as follows:

" <a href=https://literotica.com/s/convention-pt-01-star-of-the-show > “Convention Pt. 1: Star of the Show”</a> "

The href can be copied from the browser bar at the top when looking at the story, or it can be captured by right-clicking the highlighted story title in any of the lists. The portion in quotes following is the title as you want it to show in your own posted story.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I do this often in my author's postscript to provide links to earlier chapters of a series.


The story was published without a problem by the link to the "Mother Story" called Upstairs Downstairs was
stripped out. I really thought it would be helpful to readers on one to easily find the other.

The two stories are in a Series called "Open Couple Saga" which will have more stories added. The Series icon
is does not show on the sidebar for the actual story, so I thought an embedded link was a good idea.

Has there been a change in policy on linking to another story?

Thought on why it was stripped out?

 

[iwatchus]

Did you really post it without the quotes? HTML requires quotes after href=.

I seem to point to this a lot, but if you have HTML questions, look at @FrancessScott how to format html for a really good description of what works and doesn't work in stories.

 

[THBGato]

Don't know, but I always say in the 'note to admin' field that all hyperlinks are to Literotica pages. They've always come out fine... but a story got rejected when I included a non-lit link.

 

[iwatchus]

My assumption was that one is an automated check -- they are not going to trust anyone on that and why make Laurel click on each thing. It's also an easy to check automatically.

I remember seeing somewhere that they strip out html tags that are not supported and invalid (missing the quotes) href anchor tags could easily just be stripped.

 

[all_ways_bi]

Did you really post it without the quotes? HTML requires quotes after href=.

I seem to point to this a lot, but if you have HTML questions, look at @FrancessScott how to format html for a really good description of what works and doesn't work in stories.

In the OP I reference FrancessScott - same html : <a href="https://www.literotica.com/authors/FrancesScott/works/stories">FrancesScott</a>

I really did with out the outer quotes. Tested in draft and it worked fine.

I suppose next time I have to put a note in the Admin box about the internal link. Doesn't help me now.

Just don't understand something that is prescribed and allows per "How to . . ." was stripped. If it was an issue it would have been sent back I believe.

 

[all_ways_bi]

My assumption was that one is an automated check -- they are not going to trust anyone on that and why make Laurel click on each thing. It's also an easy to check automatically.

I remember seeing somewhere that they strip out html tags that are not supported and invalid (missing the quotes) href anchor tags could easily just be stripped.

I would think that too. essay enough to make a bot to look for EXTERNAL links - which are not allowed / supported.
But this was the HTML form shown in FrancessScott How To and a couple other places. So an suto check shold show this was in compliance.

 

[iwatchus]

In the OP I reference FrancessScott - same html : <a href="https://www.literotica.com/authors/FrancesScott/works/stories">FrancesScott</a>

I really did with out the outer quotes. Tested in draft and it worked fine.

I suppose next time I have to put a note in the Admin box about the internal link. Doesn't help me now.

Just don't understand something that is prescribed and allows per "How to . . ." was stripped. If it was an issue it would have been sent back I believe.

Sorry, I missed that you had the how to cited. My bad.

Did you copy the a tag here from your document or did you retype in your post. Because OP is missing the required quotes and I expect to fail if you submitted it that way. Simple, but seriously impactful typo. It also fails if you have smart quotes in the tag rather than the vertical quotes.

 

[gunhilltrain]

I would think that too. essay enough to make a bot to look for EXTERNAL links - which are not allowed / supported.
But this was the HTML form shown in FrancessScott How To and a couple other places. So an suto check shold show this was in compliance.

You probably should say what the link is for. "This is the link to the previous chapter." On the forums, you can link outside Lit. In "new story advertisements," a sub-forum inside Story Feedback, I often put in a link to a photo that shows a real location in the story. I don't think readers are craving to know what a house in Long Island City looks like, but it's there if anybody does.

 

[FrancesScott]

<a href=https://literotica.com/s/convention-pt-01-star-of-the-show > “Convention Pt. 1: Star of the Show”</a>

You have a missing double quote after the equals sign. You have another missing quote before the >. It should be:

<a href="https://literotica.com/s/convention-pt-01-star-of-the-show">Convention Pt. 1: Star of the Show</a>

Note it has to be plain quotes, not curly ones.

 

[TheLobster]

HTML does not require quotes around attributes such as `href`.

However, I wouldn't be surprised if Literotica's validation logic treats unquoted attributes as malformed; supporting them would probably complicate the parsing logic too much. Considering how finicky Lit's HTML support is in general, I'd make sure you do everything by the book if you do use it.

 

[iwatchus]

HTML does not require quotes around attributes such as `href`.

However, I wouldn't be surprised if Literotica's validation logic treats unquoted attributes as malformed; supporting them would probably complicate the parsing logic too much. Considering how finicky Lit's HTML support is in general, I'd make sure you do everything by the book if you do use it.

The quotes are required around the value, not the name of the attribute. so href="xxx" is required but 'href'=abc is invalid

 

[TheLobster]

The quotes are required around the value, not the name of the attribute. so href="xxx" is required but 'href'=abc is invalid

No, as per HTML it is not required to quote the attribute value. Like I said above, though, I'd definitely include them to appease the Literotica's shoddy validation.

 

[AwkwardMD]

It's probably worth pointing out this FAQ here doesn't include links. It specifically calls them out as unsupported.

 

[FrancesScott]

Please note @Laurel’s contribution to my essay below, in red:

Hyperlinks

First up, you can only link to other parts of Literotica, your own stories, other people's stories, competition / event announcements, forum threads etc. Linking off site is prohibited.

With that caveat:

Thank you to <a href="https://www.literotica.com/authors/FrancesScott/works/stories">FrancesScott</a> for beta reading my story.

will get you:

Thank you to FrancesScott for beta reading my story.

But please note you must use plain quotation marks "..." (ASCII 34) and not 'smart quotes' like “...” The latter will not work!

Lit Editor's Note: In the above example of hyperlinks, if you (the reader) click on the link, the new link opens on the same tab. So you need to click the back button to go to the original page. A workaround for the reader is to right click or hold the link (depending on PC or mobile) and "Open the link in new tab".

But there is one workaround from the "writer's" side. You (the writer) insert [ target="_blank"] (there is a space before target) after the closing quote of the URL. Now once you click on the link, it automatically opens in a new tab!

The above example becomes:

Thank you to <a href="https://www.literotica.com/authors/FrancesScott/works/stories" target="_blank">FrancesScott</a> for beta reading my story.

Now you can click on the following link and it opens in a new tab:

Thank you to FrancesScott for beta reading my story.

In other words, this is the format:

<a href="URL" target="_blank">TextHere</a>

Happy hyperlinking! (Don't link outside links please. )

 

[iwatchus]

No, as per HTML it is not required to quote the attribute value. Like I said above, though, I'd definitely include them to appease the Literotica's shoddy validation.

To be precise, in general requiring the quotes depends on many factors. Here is the official requirements from w3c. However it is considered bad practice to omit them and most checkers will reject html code without the quotes.

More relevantly, I suspect the automatic tooling for the site requires the quotes. I thought I had seen that said explicitly, but I was mistaken as I look again. But because they are so overwhelmingly expected in the industry, I would not be surprised if the tool was simplified to not make them optional.