Function to make links inside blobs of text by matching urls and replacing them with the links... includes support for cyrilic characters... still has some quirks to work out... but it works on pretty much all cases as far as I have tested it... feel free to suggest improvements! :)

make_links

function make_links($text, $class='', $target='_blank'){
    return preg_replace('!((http\:\/\/|ftp\:\/\/|https\:\/\/)|www\.)([-a-zA-Zа-яА-Я0-9\~\!\@\#\$\%\^\&\*\(\)_\-\=\+\\\/\?\.\:\;\'\,]*)?!ism', '<a class="'.$class.'" href="//$3" target="'.$target.'">$1$3</a>', $text);
}