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>