Doesn't work for me, either. Probably an erer on the interwebs. I'll contact my support guru and se if he can fix it. Be aware hat the entire web may be down for a few days.
OK, the new link works, at least. Not sure why I can't insert the styled text and have the ugly link hidden. The other major forum I use allows that with he following 'code':
<[url=http://www.thewhir.com/web-hosting-news/data-center-cooling-outage-disrupts-azure-cloud-in-japan][color=blue][b]linkText[/b][/color][/url]>
The 'link' text here is slightly different:
[url]http://www.thewhir.com/web-hosting-news/...[/url]
The "url" part is totally separate from the actual url, and this forum doesn't like anything between the two tags
except the url. I would have sworn I've made use of a text link here before, perhaps no one ever tried using the links!
I got other fish to fry (grill?)...