Hi thanks for the continued help. Yes I am on linux.
/sbin/iptables -L results in the following:
Chain INPUT (policy ACCEPT)
target prot opt source destination
Chain FORWARD (policy ACCEPT)
target prot opt source destination
Chain OUTPUT (policy ACCEPT)
target prot opt source destination
the netstat command however did not result in any output.
I did enter http://127.0.0.1. On the post, it said that I was limited to two HTML links because I was a new user, so I changed http to hxxp 
Don't believe I'm running any type of firewall like ufw so don't think that's the issue. Would any of the above mentioned extensions be interfering with Joplin?