What does “Invalid Relative Path” mean?

Question: InSite is reporting Invalid Relative Path errors for my website. What does this mean? All my links seem okay in my browser.

Answer: Links on your website can either be Absolute or Relative. Absolute links contain the protocol (usually HTTP), domain name, and the file on a website. An example of an Absolute link would be: http://www.example.com/subfolder/index.html

Relative links only contain the location of the new file relative to the current file. They are used when linking within a website. An example of a Relative link would be: subfolder/index.html

Relative links can reference files higher up in the directory structure by prefixing the relative link with “../”. For example, the relative link:
../differentfolder/images.html

on the page: http://www.example.com/subfolder/index.html

will become: http://www.example.com/differentfolder/images/html

Invalid Relative Paths are flagged when there are too many “../” prefixes in front of a Relative Link (making it impossible to properly convert the Relative Link to an Absolute Link). Many browsers ignore these types of errors (and omit the extra leading “../”) but InSite flags them, as they are technically incorrect.

If you don’t wish to see the Invalid Relative Path warnings, they can be disabled in the ‘Advanced Project Settings’ screen. (Click the ‘Wrench’ button to access it.)