Ajax response inside a div

The problem is that you have mixed arguments of Ajax success handler. First goes data which your script gives back, then goes textStatus. Theoretically it can be “timeout”, “error”, “notmodified”, “success” or “parsererror”. However, in success textStatus will always be successful. But if you need to add alert on error you can add error handler. And yes, change selector in $(“#result”) to class. So corrected code may look like this:

$.ajax({
    type: "POST",
    url: "<?php echo base_url(); ?>contents/hello",
    data: "id=" + a_href,
    success: function(data, textStatus) {
        $(".result").html(data);    
    },
    error: function() {
        alert('Not OKay');
    }
});​