# Inbound gutter post-links are not relative urls
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/inbound-gutter-post-links-are-not-relative-urls/41170
**Category:** Feature
**Created:** [March 17, 2016, 12:55am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/inbound-gutter-post-links-are-not-relative-urls/41170 "2016-03-17T00:55:04Z")
**Posts on this page:** 4
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@ryantm](https://meta.discourse.org/u/ryantm)
#### Post date: [March 17, 2016, 12:55am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/inbound-gutter-post-links-are-not-relative-urls/41170/1 "2016-03-17T00:55:04Z")
inbound gutter post-links are not relative urls for example, in this post
> [@Auto-replace emoji like smiling\_face with Discourse codes](https://meta.discourse.org/t/auto-replace-emoji-like-with-discourse-codes/26155):
>
> Over on TDWTF, I’ve been using a bot to automatically replace Unicode emoji like slight_smile with Discourse emoji codes like smile; it’s useful when posting from mobile. @codinghorror suggests it could be made a Discourse feature; it never occurred to me before, but it does sound like it’d be useful. That way it could also work in PMs, which is something I haven’t got working in my bot yet.
there is a gutter post-links link like:
`Emoji in topic names 😛💜🍦3`
I think it would be better if the link href were “/t/emoji-in-topic-names/33852/4”.
I think this is the same problem I reported in [Putting a discourse development server behind proxy seems to mess up some (but not most) URLs](https://meta.discourse.org/t/putting-a-discourse-development-server-behind-proxy-seems-to-mess-up-some-but-not-most-urls/40829) but you cannot see the avatar problem on this site because this site uses a CDN for the avatars, and in that case, it makes sense to use an absolute URL instead of a relative one.
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### Author:  [@zogstrip](https://meta.discourse.org/u/zogstrip)
#### Post date: [March 17, 2016, 8:11am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/inbound-gutter-post-links-are-not-relative-urls/41170/2 "2016-03-17T08:11:47Z")
Not sure I understand. How are relative links better than absolutes?
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### Author:  [@ryantm](https://meta.discourse.org/u/ryantm)
#### Post date: [March 21, 2016, 4:31pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/inbound-gutter-post-links-are-not-relative-urls/41170/3 "2016-03-21T16:31:51Z")
Relative links let you use different host names, ports, and protocols (https/http) for the same server. This is helpful when using a load balancer and wanting to see the individual servers behind it. For example, maybe the SSL connection is terminated at the load balancer and you want to name your servers behind the load balancer for easier troubleshooting. Being able to use different host/port/protocols is also helpful in development because you can use different parameters than the production site. Absolute links that are internal to the forum are fine if they respect the hostname, port, and protocol.
I’m not sure if you think absolute links are better, but if you do, then there are a lot more links with the opposite problem.
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### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [March 21, 2016, 6:49pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/inbound-gutter-post-links-are-not-relative-urls/41170/4 "2016-03-21T18:49:32Z")
These are not credible complaints for a production site.