How to set the root path of static website - html

Say my local website folder is at /home/me/website. I want tag refs such as "/images" to point to /home/me/website/images but when hosted online I want https://example.com/images.
I tried using a base tag on each page but with or without a base tag locally "/images" is looking for it in the root of my computer (I think). Base tag only seems to work with relative links like "images".
So I'm asking how to define the root of my website locally so that "/" points to my websites folder (so I can debug) but no change when hosted online.
Thanks.

You can use ./images or ../website/images

Related

How do I link to an image from a folder outside of my localhost

I am working on embedded website that will be served by a device running Linux. We are trying to maintain a system where editable items are in root/var/data/.. and static files are in root/opt/..
Right now my server.js is located at root/opt/webapp/server.js, i have an html file at root/opt/webapp/html/file.html
in the file.html i need to render images that are in the root/var/data folder, but my understanding of now this works is node considers localhost at root/opt/webapp(the location of server.js) how do I tag to a file that is outside of said local host but still within the file directory of the device?
I attempted an absolute path but the html just assumed that it should start the chain from localhost so
looks at http://localhost:8080/file:/C:/projects/root/var/data/fms/share/icons/avocado.png
The var folder is two folders up from your .html file, so it sounds like you're looking for either:
../../var/data/fms/share/icons/avocado.png (relative)
/root/var/data/fms/share/icons/avocado.png (root-relative)
It depends on how you're linking to the file, but you may also be able to use the absolute path relative to C::
file:///C:/projects/root/var/data/fms/share/icons/avocado.png

Background image url() works on live server but when I open the index.html in the browser it doesn't?

The element is selected properly because other properties apply. There are no console errors.
I have tried:
img/hero.jpg - works when I click on link in VS Code
/img/hero.jpg - works when I click
../../hero.jpg - work when I click
../img/hero.jpg - doesn't work
the full path - works when I click
The problem is seen here. You can see that images called by the src attribute work.
Here is the file structure.
I honestly don't understand your setup / question, but I think if you understand how relative URLs work a little better you can figure it out yourself.
On your server you have your files in somewhere like,
/var/www/html/index.html
/var/www/html/css/styles.css
/var/www/html/img/background.png
On your computer you have your files somewhere like,
C:\Users\Nani\Desktop\Website\index.html
C:\Users\Nani\Desktop\Website\css\styles.css
C:\Users\Nani\Desktop\Website\img\background.png
And in your styles.css you have something like this,
body {
background-image: url('/img/background.png');
}
Starting the URL with / tells the browser to interpret it as the root directory. On a Windows PC it will be C:\ and on a Linux PC it'll be /.
However, when you access the page once it is online from a url like https://example.com, the root directory becomes https://example.com/.
Therefore, using /img/background.png will make it look for the image at https://example.com/img/background.png once it is online, but on your local machine it'll be looking for the image at C:\img\background.png
Starting the url without the slash like this, img/background.png looks for the image relative to the folder that the css file is in. So in that case online it'll look for the background here at https://example.com/css/img/background.png and on your local machine it'll look in C:\Users\Nani\Desktop\Website\css\img\background.png
In my example, the best solution would be to use ../img/background.png, that'll look up one directory relative to the css folder, and then in the img folder. That'll work consistently on both your own computer and once it is uploaded.
That should be enough to figure out what you need to do assuming that the problem is the way the url path is declared. Otherwise, the problem might be with something else. For example, it seems like you're using SCSS. Perhaps the SCSS isn't compiled on your local machine (or hasn't been in a while), but it is compiled on the live server?
It works on live server because its settings make location of index.html a root of your document (/). When you open index.html directly your root is different and images aren't loaded from correct location if you start the path with /.
Best Practice
It is best practice to use relative file paths (if possible).
When using relative file paths, your web pages will not be bound to your current base URL. All links will work on your own computer (localhost) as well as on your current public domain and your future public domains.
I had the same problem and it turns out that I wrote the path wrongly. You have to write the url based on where the css file is, not where the index file is. Because the one that reads the url is the css file. So it should look like this:
body {background-image: url('../img/background.png');}
Because your CSS and your IMG are in different folders.

../../ offline vs cpanel to not have to change tags in cpanel

I do a lot of off line programming.
Sometimes for example this path /a/b/c/d.html
to go backwards to an anchor at a/a.html
I frequently see ../ or ../../ what do they mean, how are they used?
how do I use them and not have to put the entire path of the website in,
if the main site is html.com
how do I use the folders without using html
example I want the anchor at a/a.html without using html.com/a/a.html
would this work the same to not have to use it? ../a/a.html
did not work in offline mode
explain please
so that I don't have to re write the links from offline to public html
and the sites name
../image.jpg means 'go up one directory and use image.jpg'
./image.jpg means use the image in this directory
/image.jpg means 'use the image from the root directory of the website'
So this example:
<img src"../../images/image.jpg" alt="an image">
Uses the image from 2 directory levels up and then go in the images directory and then use image.jpg.
That should get you started.

Correctly using relative path in image file

From the very start of my development career one thing that has kept confusing me is relative and absolute paths.
Now I understand it in the way of URLs and that if you are going to a webpage on the same server you use the relative path and if the page is on a different (external) server then you will need to use the absolute path i.e. http://www.google.com. But I never understood it in the way of files.
Example and my problem.
I am building a HTML email class that will send a image as a img as a banner
builder.AppendLine("<img src=C:\Images\\MailBanner.jpg\" alt=\"banner\">");
Now if I use the absolute path like above, the image will display.
However, when I deploy the site onto our web server, then of course, the image is not in the C: Drive so the image doesn't appear in the email. So where do I need to put the \..\ in the source?
Is it as the point where the image is stored on the web server in the project?
I guessing you may need some more information then I have posted but I may need some explanation really.
Thanks
Just put images in a folder images under your project folder then your code will be:
builder.AppendLine("<img src=\"\images\MailBanner.jpg\" alt=\"banner\">");
And your image path is:
/project/images/MailBanner.jpg
And your project is normally under the www folder of your web server folder.
Set up an images folder in your project and fix your src attribute:
builder.AppendLine('<img src="images/mailbanner.jpg" alt="banner">');
EDIT: your problem here is your javascript code. You need to use an Apostrophe before and after your tag and quotation marks for your attributes of the img tag. Otherwise your javascript cant understand which your attributes are.
I prefer to mostly use relative paths, because when you move the data from a local location to a web server, as long as the directory structure doesn't change nothing will break. But, the OS also matters.
For instance, I can see that your file was moved from a windows server. So unless you moved it to another windows server and the drive letter is the same, your absolute path is broken.
If the file was moved to a windows server with the exact same directory structure:
builder.AppendLine('<img src="C:\Images\MailBanner.jpg" alt="banner">');
If the file was moved to a linux server:
www/images
builder.AppendLine('<img src="/Images/MailBanner.jpg" alt="banner">');
NOTE: The first forward slash is very important. The / tells Apache that the directory is located in the document root (www). Without the /, Apache expects the directory to be in the current directory where the file/script is located. Another important consideration when moving files from Windows to Linux is that Linux is case sensitive. /Images/MailBanner.jpg is not the same as images/mailbanner.jpg.

Base URL that works for html in files and on website?

Like many developers I put my images in /images, css in /css, and js in /js. This way, no matter what the URL/directory structure, the site can simply reference /css/style.css or /js/jquery.
Problem is when I try opening the html from a directory, the paths are screwed up. It assumes / is C:/
I'd like to be able to preview html files in a directory before putting them into a CMS on the web, but don't know how. Can somehow be used to handle this with minimal hassle?
Using root-relative links is great but, as you see, can cause issues when working locally.
Ideally, you'd set up a local web server on your machine and preview that way rather than just using the file system.
By putting a slash in front of your path, you're making it an absolute path. You should use absolute paths as rarely as possible - instead, use relative paths.
Say you have a directory structure like this:
/website
/html
/css
style.css
test.html
script.js
/newcss
newstyle.css
If you're in test.html and you need to refer to style.css, the relative path would be css/style.css. If you need to refer to script.js, the relative path would be just script.js. If you need to refer to newstyle.css, the relative path would be ../newcss/newstyle.css (the .. means "go up one directory level").
This has the benefit of making your code portable - you could copy the website folder anywhere you wanted, on any system, even to your websever, and it would work. Both *nix and Windows systems obey these rules.
You could consider setting up a local server like XAMPP. That way, your files will be previewable on http://127.0.0.1 and your absolute paths can be made to work just like on the web. XAMPP comes with a default htdocs directory into which you would put your file structure.
It may take some time of setting it up and getting into it, though.