Title: Cannot set external links
Last modified: April 14, 2020

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# Cannot set external links

 *  [steehl](https://wordpress.org/support/users/steehl/)
 * (@steehl)
 * [6 years, 1 month ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/cannot-set-external-links/)
 * Hello everybody,
 * while we were finalizing the launch of our new website we came into the following
   issue, which appear just today:
    We cannot add external links to pages anymore
   besides google.de
 * We are using WP 5.4 with Gutenberg editor. When we try to save a page that includes
   an external link like e.g unsplash.com the response is something like “Aktualisierung
   fehlgeschlagen. Die Antwort ist keine gültige JSON-Antwort.”
    Which is German
   for something like “update failed. the response is not a valid JSON-response”.
   If we replace the link with an link to our own website OR to google.de, it works
   fine. This issue is new since today. It’s been working for weeks fine. Today 
   we changed the domain manually from preview.<ourdomain>.de to <ourdomain.de>.
   We changed links in wp_posts and admin gui. everything else is working fine.
 * Any hints? thanks for your help and best regards

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)

 *  Moderator [tobifjellner (Tor-Bjorn “Tobi” Fjellner)](https://wordpress.org/support/users/tobifjellner/)
 * (@tobifjellner)
 * [6 years, 1 month ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/cannot-set-external-links/#post-12675061)
 * Unfortunately, this error message is quite generic. Its meaning is that the JavaScript
   that runs in the block editor (which expects to receive the server response in
   JSON) got something it wasn’t able to understand.
 * In most cases this means that the server for some reason sent an error message.
 * If you in your browser open the developer tools and watch the “console” then 
   you may see more information about what was actually received.
 * But I’ll make a quick guess first: Check that you have updated both the WordPress
   address and the Website address under Settings → General?
 * Also: How did you search and replace URL’s? Some settings are saved as “serialized
   data”, which is a special format, declaring “length, name, value”. If the length
   of your saved URL changed here, but the “length” declaration wasn’t updated, 
   then you’ll have broken settings in many places. Easiest solution in that case
   may be to go back to the migration file and try some serializing-aware solution
   for search/replace (there are WordPress plugins for this, for instance).
 *  Thread Starter [steehl](https://wordpress.org/support/users/steehl/)
 * (@steehl)
 * [6 years, 1 month ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/cannot-set-external-links/#post-12676058)
 * Thanks for the first hint.
 * the error code generating the JSON message ist an http 500 error.
    (service temporarily
   not available)
 * An interesting point this morning was, that I could do approx. 20 edits with 
   no issues and then suddenly the problem reoccured. After that I couldn’t even
   redo edits which were successfully saved 5 minutes before.
 *  Moderator [Yui](https://wordpress.org/support/users/fierevere/)
 * (@fierevere)
 * 永子
 * [6 years, 1 month ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/cannot-set-external-links/#post-12676838)
 * service temporarily not available – is 503, not 500,
    503 is caused by hitting
   resource limits on server (like connection limit or overall account limit) 500
   is caused by script error, or memory allocation error,
 * error 500 should be logged, please check your PHP error log on server
    for anything
   with “Fatal” at the end of log file.
 *  Thread Starter [steehl](https://wordpress.org/support/users/steehl/)
 * (@steehl)
 * [5 years, 11 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/cannot-set-external-links/#post-13018481)
 * We finally found the problem: WordPress is running on a hosted service at STRATO.
   Strato also has a guest-book spam filter included in its service. This spam-filter
   blocks suspicious post requests by returning a 503. For some reason it sometimes(
   not always) detects wordpress editor save request including links in the content
   as such suspicious post requests and blocks them.
    Deactivating the spam filter
   solved the problem.

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)

The topic ‘Cannot set external links’ is closed to new replies.

## Tags

 * [adding links](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/adding-links/)
 * [JSON error](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/json-error/)

 * In: [Fixing WordPress](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/how-to-and-troubleshooting/)
 * 4 replies
 * 3 participants
 * Last reply from: [steehl](https://wordpress.org/support/users/steehl/)
 * Last activity: [5 years, 11 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/cannot-set-external-links/#post-13018481)
 * Status: not resolved

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