Title: Prevent Default does not work
Last modified: January 26, 2024
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# Prevent Default does not work
* [Joe Bailey](https://wordpress.org/support/users/billybidley/)
* (@billybidley)
* [2 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/prevent-default-does-not-work/)
* This plugin has an option for **Do not prevent the default click functionality.**
* This suggests the default functionality of this plugin **does **prevent the default
click functionality.
* Unfortunately, this is not the case. You have to manually specify `javascript:
void(0)` as the URL for an anchor link. This is not mentioned anywhere by the
plugin, and should just be done by default. I only know to do this because I
am a developer. WordPress plugins should be simple enough for anyone to use.
Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
* Plugin Author [Daniel Iser](https://wordpress.org/support/users/danieliser/)
* (@danieliser)
* [2 years, 2 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/prevent-default-does-not-work/#post-17536491)
* [@billybidley](https://wordpress.org/support/users/billybidley/) – Sorry to hear
you had trouble.
* Did you open a support ticket or email? Our team is on every day replying.
* Not sure how your setting things up but it sounds as if your selector is for
an element with a link inside it, you might need to specify the `a` tag within
the element specifically. Lets say you have `.wp-button-component` as your selector,
then we are gonna prevent the default on that element, but the click event really
comes from the `a` within, thus your selector would need to be `.wp-button-component
a`.
* Otherwise this has been solid feature for nearly 5 years without change or reported
issue, so its unlikely the functionality itself rather than configuration.
* Oh, I should mention its also possible that another plugin/theme also hooked
in click trigger listener, we can’t prevent those, any more than they could prevent
ours. Preventing the default would only apply to something like a link navigating
the browser away from the current page when clicked. There are ways to make that
action occur that are not preventable with “**preventDefault**“.
* Hope that helps.
* Thread Starter [Joe Bailey](https://wordpress.org/support/users/billybidley/)
* (@billybidley)
* [2 years, 2 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/prevent-default-does-not-work/#post-17537165)
* Hi Daniel,
* Thanks for the reply.
* The plugin does work, but needs extra steps. I had targeted an anchor link, but
had a URL in the link. The wording of the plugin, “prevent default” suggested
to me that it would prevent going to that link and instead open the popup, however,
that is not the case. As I mentioned, you need to add `javascript:void(0)` as
the URL for the link. This should be specified in either the plugin itself or
the documentation. Many people are likely to use a link to open their popup,
and not realise they need to specify this as the URL in order to get your plugin
to work correctly.
* Plugin Author [Daniel Iser](https://wordpress.org/support/users/danieliser/)
* (@danieliser)
* [2 years, 2 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/prevent-default-does-not-work/#post-17679389)
* [@billybidley](https://wordpress.org/support/users/billybidley/) – As I mentioned
before there are caveats, but both our docs/tools & our support team would have
been happy to help.
* We even have a tool to help you get the correct selector built into the admin
toolbar on the frontend: [https://docs.wppopupmaker.com/article/147-getting-css-selectors](https://docs.wppopupmaker.com/article/147-getting-css-selectors)
* The problem you faced isn’t something we can account for easily, its often unique
per site, per theme, and every site is different, every “button” or “link” users
want to target is created a different way thus the selectors need to be specialized
to each scenario, no way around it.
* What you missed was that your theme, page builder or gutenberg button/link wasn’t
just a link.
* You likely added a class to that button like `my-custom-button` then set your
popup trigger to prevent default on the selector `.my-custom-button`, but your
page html was most likely:
* ```wp-block-code