Change the way links are displayed in menus in front-end

app/controllers/pages_controller.rb

@@ -21,7 +21,7 @@ class PagesController < ApplicationController
            when 'Page'    
              render_page
            when 'Link'
-             redirect_to "http://#{@item[:url]}"
+             redirect_to @item[:url]
          end
        else
          render :file => "#{Rails.root}/public/404.html", :status => :not_found

app/models/link.rb

@@ -2,10 +2,20 @@ class Link < Item
   
   field :url
   
-  validates_presence_of :url
+  validates :url, :presence => true, :format => /^(http|https):\/\/[a-z0-9]+([\-\.]{1}[a-z0-9]+)*\.[a-z]{2,5}(([0-9]{1,5})?\/.*)?$/ix
+
+	before_validation :add_http
 
   def link
     ApplicationController.helpers.link_to(self.name, self.url)
   end
+
+  protected
+
+	def add_http
+	  unless self.url[/^http?s:\/\//]
+	    self.url = 'http://' + self.url
+	  end
+	end
     
 end