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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-13T18:38:35+00:00

Question about paths while working in Visual Studio. In my master page I have

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Question about paths while working in Visual Studio. In my master page I have some paths to load css files as well as javascript files.

My first question is if I use relative paths, should the relative path be from the location of the master page file? For example if I keep all my master page files in a folder off the site root called MasterPages should I assume that is the starting point for my relative paths to load the css files? If that master page is used to wrap an aspx file several directories down the tree is the hard coded relative path still valid?

Second question, is there a way to use absolute paths so that everything works on my local machine as well as when I move the files up to the webroot? For example my app path on my local machine may be localhost/myappdir/default.aspx but when i move the app to the server there is no myappdir and the default.aspx is in the webroot. I do not want to have to change paths in the files after they are moved up to the server.

currently I have..

src=”<%= VirtualPathUtility.ToAbsolute(“~/lib/css/style.css”)%>”

but this way Visual Studio cannot find the css file to update intellisence

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    As a rule, you should be using server-relative paths (as in, /images/stuff.gif) to everything all the time. Using relative paths (as in ../images/stuff.gif) will screw you every single time, as will trying to rely on ASP.NET “Magic” such as VirtualPathUtility.ToAbsolute and ResolveClientUrl.

    Occasionally, on the server you’ll need to prepend that path with a tilda (as in ~/images/stuff.gif) so that it will correctly navigate the virtual directories that ASP.NET requires you to base all your projects in.

    Naturally, this also means that you’ll need to set your dev box up with multisite so that you can change your root to something like http://mysite.dev/ and ensure that all your server-relative paths work correctly. (Using the VS.NET built-in server would technically work around that too, but really, do you want to use that thing???)

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