Hi Jamie,
Thank you so much for reaching out and for taking the time to report the compatibility issue between Bibliatodo VerseLinker and the Modern Footnotes plugin. We’ve reviewed your report and the support thread you linked, and we’re happy to let you know that the issue has been resolved in the latest update (v1.0.9).
What caused the issue?
VerseLinker includes a mechanism to clean up links that look like partial or incomplete Bible references (e.g. “John 3”, “5:7”). Unfortunately, this logic was a bit too aggressive and ended up removing anchor tags (<a>) used by Modern Footnotes—specifically those that looked like simple numbers, such as <a>2</a>. This broke the tooltips/notes from being displayed properly.
What we changed
We’ve refined the internal pattern-matching logic (regex) so that VerseLinker will now only clean links that contain full and valid Bible references like:
Links that do not match this stricter pattern—such as those created by Modern Footnotes—will now be preserved and left untouched.
Optional compatibility setting
In addition to this fix, there’s also a setting available in the VerseLinker Settings panel inside WordPress:
Replace existing Bible reference URLs
Enable this option to automatically replace existing Bible reference URLs with the VerseLinker format. By doing so, all references on your site will benefit from the tooltip feature and other functions.
If you disable this checkbox, VerseLinker will not convert any existing URLs, allowing you to preserve the original links or use a different referencing system. Only uncheck this box if you truly want to keep your current URLs intact.
When this setting is enabled, existing Bible references that are already wrapped in links will be enhanced with tooltips.
If you ever encounter a conflict or need a temporary workaround, disabling this option will allow you to keep third-party URLs untouched while still using VerseLinker for plain text references.
However, we’re happy to confirm that the issue you reported has now been fully resolved.
How to get the fix
Just make sure you’re using VerseLinker v1.0.9. You can update it directly from the WordPress plugin repository.
Please feel free to test it again and let us know if anything else comes up. We’re very grateful for your feedback—it helped us improve compatibility with other great plugins like Modern Footnotes!
Wishing you a wonderful week ahead.
Blessings,
Bibliatodo Team
