Internal linking with http://www - Good/Bad?

[superslurpee]

Hi,

With regards to internal linking, is there any downside to including the full domain name or does this increase bandwidth? That is, for links, images, css, etc. instead of linking like "/folder1/folder2/file.php" or "../folder2/file.php" is it okay to use "

http://www.domain.com/folder1/folder2/file.php"?

Does this increase bandwidth or cause delays? If it's all the same, I would assume the full http:// version would simply increase the file size of the page the link is on and it would be smarter to use the shortened version.

Thanks for any input!

Darth Slurpee
--At last we will reveal ourselves to the SEV employees--

 

[BillyRayPreachersSon]

There is no difference wirth regards to bandwidth, delays, etc.

The only hassle would be if you ever moved to a new domain, you'd have to do a global search-and-replace, instead of doing nothing at all.

Hope this helps,
Dan


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[ChrisHunt]

There is a slight increase in bandwidth. If you're transmitting "

http://www.example.com/mypage.htm"

instead of "mypage.htm" that's 23 extra bytes you have to send. However, nobody's likely to notice the difference unless you've got masses of links on your pages.

The real cost is the hassle of typing those long URLs in in the first place, and of changing them if you ever move domains.

Never mind the downsides, I can think of no UPside to doing this. Why would you want to do it?

-- Chris Hunt
Webmaster & Tragedian
Extra Connections Ltd

 

[superslurpee]

Thanks for the input. The webserver is a single php constant that is simply added to every link, image, etc. so having to type it each time is a non-issue. I'm not sure why it was added other than for clarity.

Thanks again.

Darth Slurpee
--At last we will reveal ourselves to the SEV employees--