What is Absolute Path in WordPress
Internal links are web pages within a website that link to other pages on the same site, while external links are hyperlinks that send users to different websites. There are two types of internal linking- Absolute paths and Relative paths. A web developer can use either when creating internal links.
An absolute path includes everything needed to locate a specific file or directory, starting with the domain URL. It can be either long or short; the latter begins with a forward slash and part of the full URL but omits the domain name.
The Difference Between Absolute & Relative Paths
An absolute path includes the full URL to a specific folder or file, while a relative path only points to an associated link. Relative paths are often used in conjunction with other paths to retrieve a particular file.
Site creators, therefore, use relative paths to link files or pages from within their site, but if they want to connect with anything else, like an external folder on a different site, they need the Absolute path URL. To locate the absolute path for operating systems, you can right-click on the target folder/file and select “properties.”
Absolute Paths Best Practices
Always use the relative path or short version of the absolute path when linking to another page on your website. Hence, by doing so, you are communicating to the server that the linked page is hosted on the same site, which then accelerates web page loading times. If you ever change your domain name, using this method will ensure that none of your links break because your old domain name is not hardcoded into them.