Can someone tell me how this link works?

Sorry, I left out the “/”

<a href="/about.html">

Anything with “/whatever.extension” goes to the server root.

So a link to “/about.html” on a page at the URL https://www.whatever.com/whatsup/with/this would still link to “https://whatever.com/about.html”

If you wanted to link to https://www.whatever.com/whatsup/with/this/about.html you would have to make the link “about.html” instead of “/about.html”

OK, good to know.

I think I got confused because I HAVE used paths like “../about.html”, which doesn’t point to one level above the root, it points to one level above the folder the file is in.

So just “/” before a file means “root directory/thefile.file no matter where it is, but “../” before a file means “one folder up from where this file is/thefile.file”

“/whatever.html” – root
“./whatever.html” – current folder
“../whatever.html” – one folder up
“../../whatever.html” – two folders up
etc.

same holds true on the command line.