Why ? xx or other

Hi I am new here I just want to know why in certain url. address given by members of the forum is odd,that is why instead of giving the full www or http they put a 'x' on either the 'w' or 't'. I do not understand why it is so difficult to correct it.is there a reason for this ? I sometime overlook it and paste to the address bar and the page could not found and looking closer I find the address is wrong. Thanks.

[JMI]

sinchee:

If your profile is displaying your correct age, it is nice to have someone my own age here.

The reason you see some references to URLs using "hxxp," or some other variation is that some guy, I belive it was JMI , told everyone that they were not supposed to post "clickable" links to places off the Forum. The reason for that rule is that if someone posts a "clickable" link and then one of our Users "clicks" that link, the Browser makes THIS FORUM the "referrer" of the access to that site. That site can look at this "referrer" information and discover that someone came to their site from this Forum. Since this Forum may be discussing how to defeat the protection of that site's software, they then have a direct link back here and could cause problems for this Forum with some local authorities. If the links are not "clickable" you simply have to copy them into your browser and change the letters back to "http" and when you do this YOUR IP becomes the "referrer" seen by the site you go to visit.

Links which contain "http:\\" were, originally,all made clickable by the vBulletin software. Even how their code does not completely prevent non- Forum links from being "clickable." On the Woodmann Forum, where I also administrate, we have modified the vBulletin code so that links outside the Forums there do not work, while those inside that Forum do.

I hope that answers your question and welcome aboard.

Regards,