OK, the spacebar and Enter suggestions from Feedback didn't work, and I couldn't paste the site into the link box
What finally worked was typing the site in the post, highlighting it, and then retyping it in the link box
That link box thing inserts a hyperlink INTO TEXT. In other words (unless I'm mistaken) (entirely possible) (hopes someone else will comment here if so) ([cool]) you have to highlight text in your post first, then insert a hyperlink for that highlighted text.
So you can write
see this great article here, and highlight the word "here", and then open the lnk box and type in (or copy/paste) the URL you want to refer to. That will make the word "here" underlined and an active link to the URL you typed into the link box.
Or you can enter the text of the link into the post (like you did), then highlight it and type or copy/paste the URL. That will make a live link in the text:
http://projects.latimes.com/dogs/name-list/lord-rings/
I don't know why the "hit enter/spacebar after typing URL in the thread to make the link live" doesn't work. It works for me in IE7, are you using another browser?
In fact, just copy/pasting from your live link in your post put a live link into my post...
Also another hint for those confused by the link box as I was when I first started using it: don't forget, if you are copy/pasting a URL, to delete the pre-typed "http//" you find in the link box when you first open it. If you leave it, you may have one too many "http//"s in your link and it will not work that way.
Probably further discussion of this will take place in Feedback, so folks should probably refer to that discussion for problemsolving.
a.s. (not an admin, just a frequent hyperlinker)