pageoneresults - 7:29 pm on Aug 5, 2007 (gmt 0)

What do you think about me using the full url in the base ref on each individual page, combined with internal a href="/page.htm" type links?

Hehehe, I don't. As I mentioned above, I don't use the Base Element with the exception of framesets.

Would it be likely to confuse bots?

I don't know but it still confuses me whenever the topic comes up. :)

Others care to comment?

Please do. I'd like to see an explanation in Layman's Terms.

Clearly, many people are also confused by the base ref meta.

Absolutely. Whenever something confuses me this much, I just avoid it. Also, based on the cons of using the Base Element, I see no reason to utilize it outside of production environments.

I just did a search on WebmasterWorld and sure enough, I was able to turn up a topic from 2002 where we discussed the Base Element.

Path Information - The Base Element
<base href="http://www.domain.com/">
[webmasterworld.com...]

And another from 2006...

Relative or Absolute - Argument has Escalated
[webmasterworld.com...]

And, believe it or not, I still don't have a Layman's Terms answer so I don't use it. ;)

And neither does internetheaven...

11:39 am on June 2, 2006 Just as an update. I still have no idea which way is the right way. But I just switched to the recommended version (i.e. base tag with ../ paths) and although I don't know how crawlers are dealing with that, it certainly cleared up some javascript issues we were having with one site and Internet Explorer!