Which ones are better to use? I was under the impression that shorter ones are easier to maintain and are just better to use for internal structure, but I'm not an experienced coder / designer, so I wasn't completely sure.

I don't think I'll be changing domains once my project is completed, and I won't be messing with the directory structure of my site either, so the folders and files won't be in different places once it's completed, so I don't see any potential problems on that front.

Also are there any server performance benefits for one over the other? I haven't noticed anything significant on my other sites, but I wanted to get some insight as I'm beginning design work throughout my project.



PS, for those that don't know:

Absolute URL Example =

http://www.example.com/about.html

Relative URL Example =

../about.html

As far as I know there aren't any performance differences, but I could be wrong. I always stick to using relative URL's as they are easier to maintain, plus Dreamweaver helps a lot for keeping my URL's up to date.

I did use absolute URL's in the 'Latest Portfolio Additions' section on my website however, this way I didn't have to go through the painful process of setting each link on each page depending on what subfolder it was in . Although this is a bit of a pain for when Im testing my site locally.

Personally, I always use a mix of the two. I like having Absolute links for document files or PDF files as it allows users to copy the link address more easily (ie: if they want to send the link to a friend by e-mail, etc.) Other than that, I usually use relative URLs because 1) they are shorter 2) it's easier to move to another domain name later on.

Will using Absolute URLs help with my Google Ranking? This has been debated before and the general response was that Google doesn't care whether it is absolute or relative.

Will using Absolute URLs help with my Google Ranking? This has been debated before and the general response was that Google doesn't care whether it is absolute or relative.

Nope.

There is ABSOLUTELY NO difference where the server performance is concerned, user agents will "normalise" relative references before requesting the document URI.
If you had a pages with thousands of images on it, using absolute addressing for the image URIs might save a few microseconds of client processing time.

Be aware that using the ../ syntax can mean different things depending on how, where and in what document it is used in.
Each ../ is normalised as referencing the folder above the current location. If all documents are in the root directory it will be ignored because HTML cannot traverse folders above the root, but using ../filename.ext from a subfolder, say "/aboutus/" will actually point to a document located in the root directory. When you go another folder down, "/aboutus/company/", ../filename.ext will be referencing a resource located in the "/aboutus/" folder.

The safest way is to use "root relative addressing" and start all URIs with a forward slash and qualify the full path to the resource.

Relative paths are better, because they are more portable. If you are developing a site, but not placing it in the main directory, or are putting it on a subdomain which is not its final location, relative paths can be moved over very easily, while absolute paths will all have to be rewritten before moving the site. As Chris points out, there are no benefits with search engines when it comes to how paths are expressed. Absolute paths simply mean more work, and I see no reason to use them.

This IS going to be a standalone site (meaning it's being built from scratch and won't have anything to do with my existing ones).

I will probably be adding a few sections to the site where they'll sit on a subdomain, but it'll be reading everything from a database, and I don't see URLs as an issue for it right now.

But I haven't gotten far enough yet for that though .


Also, SE rankings and placements don't really concern me enough to be an issue. My site won't really be relying on them for stabilization or anything, as it's more of a personal experimentation project for me.

As far as i can, i try to put relative URLs, but you have to be careful with RewriteRules and .htaccess, or navigation may become crazy and start doing whatever it wants

Relative works on localhost and when the site is FTPed to the server. That is the main reason I prefer it.