Information Resources & Technology (IRT)–

Troubleshooting: Common Linking Problems

When a link doesn't work in the browser, it's usually because of one of these common problems:

  1. The link is miss-set. Link URLs should match file names/URLs EXACTLY. Letter case matters. Also, be aware of the link type, i.e. docuement-relative, root-relative or absolute URL (e.g. http://something.stanford.edu/the/full/path/to/the/page.html)

  2. You may find it most effective to use Dreamweaver's built-in link-setting tools, found in the Properties Inspector. Select the text, then click on the folder icon next to the "Link" field and navigate to the file in your local site. "Open" and the relative link is set.

  3. You put the file with the link, but not the linked file to the server. Go to the URL for the file in question (using EXACT file name) and confirm that it's on the server. You can also confirm this by looking at your "Remote Site" pane in the "Site Files" window.

  4. Linked file name is malformed: You should not use any spaces or special characters in your file names. So "something about # 1.html" would be a bad file name, but "something_about_no_1.html" is acceptable. Use underscores or hyphens if you need to break file names into words. Files must also end with a proper suffix, i.e. .html, .htm, .pdf, .jpg, .gif, .doc, etc.

  5. If you are linking to an external file, on some other site, you must use the full URL, including "http://" or the link won't work.

For more information on setting links in Dreamweaver, use the Dreamweaver Help menu and select "Using Dreamweaver" and click on the "Linking and Navigation" item in the list on the left.

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