Absolute and Relative Links within Text

Absolute URL

An absolute URL includes the full address of the page. Clicking on that link will take you to that address.

http://mccs.gmu.edu/about/administration

If you enter an absolute URL without the http://, it will be treated as a relative URL. In most cases, this will result in a broken link.

Relative URL

Relative URLs come in two flavors.

  1. If you start a relative URL with a forward slash "/contact" then clicking on that URL will take you to that address on the current site, starting from the site's root. So clicking on a link to "/about/administration" will take you to that address on your current site.

    If you are on any page on MCCS and you click that link, you will end up on http://mccs.gmu.edu/about/administration. If you are on any page on the CHSS site and  you click on that link, you will be taken to http://chss.gmu.edu/about/administration.

  2. If you do not start with a slash "about/administration" then clicking on that URL will take you to that address on the current site, starting from wherever you are. If you place that link on http://mccs.gmu.edu/about then you will be taken to http://mccs.gmu.edu/about/about/administration. In other words, links without an initial slash are just appended onto the current URL.