Little link problem

[bike5]

I have a script that pulls URLs from my table and prints them as links to that URL. The only problem is it is linking my sites URL and adding their URL to the end of it.
Example.

<A HREF=\"$colum[site_url]\">$colum[site_name]</A>

Say $colum[site_url] == www.link.com

My link prints out-

http://www.MYSITE.com/www.link.com

It is also doing the same thing when I try to display their banners, it links my site first then adds theirs on.

How can I fix this?

Thanks for your help.

[Anon]

unless you specify that it is linking to an external site, it will try to stay within the curtrent directory.

add 'http://' to the beginning of all links and your problem will be solved.

to go a step further, some entries might already have that, so you would want to check for it first:

if (eregi("http://", $column(site_url)
{
$site_url = $column[site_url];
}
else
{
$site_url = "http://" . $column[site_url];
}

[bike5]

Thanks rawr