Links in the_content not linked

Running make_clickable on the_content will get you your links. So…

apply_filters('the_content','make_clickable');

… in your functions.php should link your content. It will be simple but you should get hyperlinks.

I don’t see a way to add the target="_blank" part. make_clickable is in wp-includes/formatting.php. You could use it as a pattern for a function that would add the target="_blank".

Or you could force a jquery script to change all the links’ targets to blank. Here’s the code for that –

<script src="https://wordpress.stackexchange.com/questions/71664/jquery-1.5.2.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
$('a').attr("target", "_blank");
</script>