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Do I need slashes before links?

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html

When I code my website, on my local computer i can use

 <a href="index.html">blablabla</a>.

However, I also can see this type of thing on other places as <a href="/index.html">blablabla</a>. I am not sure what I will need when my site goes live. If I try to do this on my local computer, it doesn't understand it. My question is, if I post my site up like this, will it work?

Ok, if I have all of the files of my site in the root directory that the main index.html file is located in, will it work when it is being hosted?

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user3417054 Avatar asked Mar 13 '14 19:03

user3417054


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1 Answers

If you do not use a slash, the link will point to index.html in the same folder as the page the link is on.

For example, if you have a link to index.html on the page www.example.com/page2.html then the link will take you to www.example.com/index.html. If you include a slash, it will do the same thing.

However, if the link is in a page in a subfolder, like www.example.com/projects/page2.html, then the first link will take you to www.example.com/projects/index.html while the second link will still take you to www.example.com/index.html.

The slash denotes the "web root."

Note that these are still considered "relative" links: they refer to a resource on the same server, regardless of the server's name. If your domain name changes or you upload it to another server, relative links will still work provided they have the same folder structure.

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nullability Avatar answered Sep 27 '22 18:09

nullability