development environment ?'s

[dabrisz]

As my sites become more and more complex I am running into more and more ?'s about how to set up the dev. envir.

I have desided to use ssi in my latest large site (400-500 pages) I have a directory structure as follows
level 1 - root - index
level 2 - sections and image directories
level 3 - subsections

I want to use the includes for main site navigation of all pages.

1.) Is there a way around using absolute links for images and hyperlinks included in the ssi?

If not,
2.) What is the best way to handle absolute links between development, test and production?

[jatar_k]

if I understand the question,

you have to use url's that start from the root, if you include them in different level directory they'll break

if your url's are all in the format

/images/something.gif or /dir1/dir2/page.html

you can then move the site around to different domains or ips and it will hold up.

I hope this is what you meant by your question, if not I can try again.

[dabrisz]

I am sorry, this is a hard question to get across.

On webmasterworld.com the top navigation always has the same href's regardless of the directory level of the page. This example is from the index page and this forum page which is in the forum10 directory. How do these links get to the same location when they are on different levels?

<a href="/help.cgi?cat=help">help</a>, <a href="http://www.webmasterworld.com/docs/about.htm">about</a>, <a href="/docs/privacy.htm">privacy policy</a>,

[dabrisz]

Again I appoligize and this time thank you for your response jatar_k. That was exactly what I needed. Thanks again :)

[TallTroll]

>> <a href="/docs/privacy.htm">privacy policy</a>

This is an absolute pathname. These start at the top of your directory structure (www.mydomain.com), and add the specified path.