What is that Double Forward Slash in the URL?
By Stephen Bucaro
Your website's statistic server indicates that someone is accessing your site with a URL
that contains a double forward slash, an example of which is shown below.
/careers/choose//
Is someone trying to hack your site? Maybe. But most likely it's someone who created a link
to your site and didn't format it properly.
Apache and Microsoft IIS web servers will automatically combine multiple forward slashes into
a single forward slash. In the case of the example shown above, with no file name after the
double forward slash, you're default page (index.html, default.asp, or whatever you've
configured as your default page) will be transferred. You did place a default page in that
directory, didn't you?
Unfortunately, the web browser, when storing the base URL of the webpage will not be so smart,
and all relative links on the page will be broken. This means any relative linked scripts
or styles will not be loaded. However, this problem can be solved by using the <base>
element to explicitly define the base URL. An example of a <base> element is shown below:
<base href="http://bucarotechelp.com/careers/choose/default.asp" />
The <base> element would be placed in the <head> section of your webpage.
It's actually a good idea to include a base element in your pages even if you're not concerned
about double forward slashes because it helps browsers and search spiders resolve your relative links.
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