dynamic web address variable?

I’ve used wordpress before in the passed, last used it just over a year ago. I’m now making another site using wordpress and I just have a quick question.

I’m creating my template and I find myself adding in the absolute url to link to images and pages.

– http://localhost:8888/website/wp-content/themes/site/…

I’m just wondering if there’s a dynamic variable that contains this information. so my links look more like

– <?php variable ?>/wp-content/themes/site/…

so that when I launch my site i don’t have to go back and change all the absolute url

thanks.