I have found a solution that works for me from the fck editor website on how to set external links in the fck editor to default to target="_blank

Here is the DotnetNuke version. its rather easy once you find the location.
you add a value="_blank" and a selected="selected"
and delete a selected="selected"

Go to: Mywebsite\Providers\HtmlEditorProviders\Fck\FCKeditor\editor\dialog\fck_link.html

1. search for select id="cmbTarget"

cut selected="selected" from and paste it into

2. search for input id="txtTargetFrame"

and add value="_blank" to the tag.

Users can still change it but if they just create a link without selecting the target it will open in a new window. cheers

Very nice explanation

I tried to follow your instructions by modifying the fck_link.html and refreshed my wysiwyg page but it seems that the target="_blank" has not been inserted into the tag by default yet.

Is there any step that I missed? Thanks for your help.