My website column will not work as links
A column of company websites contains a mixture of forms: some with https://, some starting www, some bare domains, and a few entries that are not addresses at all.
Why it happens
- A URL needs a scheme to be a URL.
- Columns like this are almost always assembled by hand over time, from business cards, email signatures, and forms, so they carry every convention anyone used.
- Mixed in with the format variation is genuine rubbish: an email address in the website column, a company name, “n/a”, or a domain with a typo in the suffix.
- Adding https:// to everything is therefore the wrong instinct.
What to do now
- Separate normalisation from validation.
- Look for the entries that are not addresses at all before you normalise, because afterwards they are much harder to spot.
- Do not test these by opening them one at a time.
Next time
A url field normalises what is safe to normalise and refuses the rest.
Start from the contact list template.
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