The beginning forward slash means start at document root, so it basically says to strip all "folders" down to the root domain (which on your dev system means just the IP address).
One option is to use the base
tag to set up relative links for the external url menu type. You could add this to your template file's index.php just after the <head>
declaration:
<base href="<?php echo JURI::root(); ?>" />
This can introduce a host of issues with relative links though, so you may want to weigh the issues with that here: Is it recommended to use the <base> html tag?
The second option would be to try it with index.php
at the start, so make the url index.php/contact-us
. I believe that this will be routed properly as an internal link.
This will cause an issue if you go live and turn on htaccess URL rewriting. I just checked and this will not have the index.php
section removed, so that is an issue.
The third option (which takes more work but is probably recommended) is to stop linking to internal urls with external url menu items. Joomla tends to function best when you set up a menu item for your urls. (Much of the url routing is based around the menu item.)
Really the third option is that it may be easier to help you not use the External URL menu item than to fix the routing issue.