Linking Guidelines

When linking from one page to another on the same server, always use relative links. These links may be relative from root or from the current path based on the developer's judgment, but they should never be absolute. In general, an absolute link is a URL that begins with a scheme, such as http: or https:.

Relative links

• <a href="/news/">Relative to root</a>
• <a href="news/">Relative to the current path (a subdirectory of the current directory)</a>
• <a href="../">Relative to the current path (up one level in the directory tree)</a>

Absolute links

• <a href="https://www.transportation.gov/">External site</a>
• <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/">Also external</a>
• <a href="//www.google.com/">Absolute, but scheme-relative</a>

It is important to use relative links in the FAA server environment because the development environment uses a different subdomain (dev-www). If you use an absolute link to point to a page, e.g. https://dev-www.faa.gov/news/, when the page is published, the link will still go to the development environment's subdomain.

Examples

Helpful hints

• In most cases, leave off the trailing index file from the URL. That is, link to https://www.transportation.gov/ and not to https://www.transportation.gov/index.html. This not only helps to keep URLs short and legible, but also avoids future maintenance if a site decides to change file extensions.
• Include the trailing forward slash (/). That is, link to https://www.transportation.gov/research-technology/ and not to https://www.transportation.gov/research-technology. This is done to remove ambiguity. It prevents the remote server from first searching for a file called "research-technology" and then silently redirecting to the folder "/research-technology/" when the file is not found.