Create a Short URL

Owned by James Filby (Unlicensed)
Last updated: Feb 17, 2020
5 min read

This article explains the creation of a short, or “vanity” URL using our short URL service short.cm which will map short URLs to our vanity domain name which is located at http://dby.ac

This should be used, ideally, for all of our vanity URLs from now on. Vanity URLs are shorter versions of our website URLs which are used primarily in print media, or other locations where a longer URL might be more difficult to remember.

Instructions

First time accessing short.cm:

Request access to short.cm - this will need to be requested via a team admin, currently, either Peter Briers (p.briers@derby.ac.uk) or James Filby (j.filby@derby.ac.uk) in the Web Development department are able to grant access to the system.

Log in to app.short.cm - when you log in for the first time you will be asked to set a password before you are presented with the administration panel.

Creating a short URL

Once logged in you will be shown the short URL admin panel which looks similar to the below image:

The process for creating a basic short URL is very simple.

The first thing to do is to take the “to” URL, which is where you would like the redirect to go, and copy and paste it into the input at the top labelled “Paste URL here to shorten…” you need to paste the entire address, including the “https://” part

Note that the “to” URL does not have to be a derby.ac.uk address - any address can be shortened including external addresses and subdomains

The complete URL will be used “as is” including any hash values or query strings (for example campaign strings) which will be retained. Be aware of this and avoid adding these items unless they are required.

 

Once you have pasted the address you will be presented with the following pop-up:

The most important field on here is the Link slug, this is the actual short URL. short.cm will automatically generate a random, unique, slug for you when you paste the URL. If the link is for Social Media or to be used in email collateral then you may simply wish to use this auto-generated link, however, for most short vanity URLs you will want to change this to something sensible and meaningful.

Note that all custom short URLs are case insensitive, so dby.ac/test is the same as dby.ac/TEST or dby.ac/Test

You may wish to change the Link title as this is taken directly from the page meta-data. Above, for example, you can see there is some duplicated and nonsense text in the Link title. You should change this to something meaningful.

You should not alter the Original URL field unless it is incorrect.

You should add tags to the link to enable us to filter short URLs more easily. Several tags are already set up which should cover most scenarios, try to keep to the current naming convention. Note that when adding tags, you need to click the green + button or the tag will not be added to the link.

Once you have made your alterations click the “Save” button in the bottom right of the pop-up.

Once you have completed this process it should become fairly natural and you should find that you can complete a short URL in a matter of moments.

Campaign URLs

short.cm has a feature which makes it easy to create a campaign URL. Once you have created your URL, if required, you may add UTM tags. To do this, click on the Campaign tracking tab of the URL pop-up and you will see the following screen:

This will allow you to enter UTM tags which will be added to the URL and correctly encoded. The user will simply see the original short URL without the UTM tags.

Short URLs can be set to expire on a particular date and time. This may be useful for competition URLs, or for URLs which link to limited events or forms. The link will remain in short.cm, but will redirect to the expiration URL rather than the original URL after the requested date and time.

Once created a link can be edited. Note that, by default, links are set up to 302 temporary redirects, so altering a link will not require a user to flush their browser cache in order for the change to take effect. To edit a link, hover over it in the list in the administration panel and some options for the link will be displayed:

There are several options here for editing a link or performing other operations.

The pencil icon allows you to edit an existing short URL. Clicking this icon will open up the pop-up panel that is shown when a new short URL is first created.

The copy icon allows you to duplicate the selected URL.

 

The stats icon allows you to view analytics information for the currently selected short URL including geographic information, the number of clicks, most popular referrals, etc.

The share icon allows you to share the link via social media channels. Several options are presented including Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and so on.

The bin icon will delete the currently selected URL. Note that once deleted, the user will be redirected to our default 404 “page not found” page.