What is the canonical way to link to pages?

This link WordPress Codex: Linking… provides detailed information on how to link different types of content. One nice feature that solves the above problem is to use a link of the form /wordpress/archives.php. This will transfer nicely (in most cases) to any particular server deployment.

Further, looking in wp-includes/link-template.php gives you more insight to what kinds of tools are already available for creating links. Particularly helpful is home_url() which allows you to try to be as server agnostic as possible.