Forum .LRN Q&A: Response to stupid user admin question

I'm pretty sure External URL is a left over from the original master's thesis that started this project. It is not a very complex idea and is not well integrated with OACS.

I think you should consider using/expanding file storage or static portlets.  The use case you are describing would almost certainly eventaully want internationization thus you want to gravitate towards a package that uses/will use the content repository.