Feature

Short link support

Short links are the layer on top of SecureRedirector that gives you a Bitly-style slug — links.yourcompany.com/promo → https://destination.example/landing-page?utm_… — when you need one. They are completely optional, per-domain, and live alongside the rule engine without replacing it.

When to use short links

• You're running a campaign with a memorable URL you want to print or paste in social copy.
• You need to change the destination later without changing the URL the customer sees.
• You want per-slug analytics — click counts, referrers, time-of-day — separate from your domain default.
• You're migrating from Bitly or Rebrandly and want a like-for-like experience first, with the option to layer rule-based routing later.

How resolution interacts with rules

Short-link lookup runs before the rule engine. When a request comes in, SecureRedirector checks the path against the short-link table for that domain first. If the slug matches, the request redirects to the stored destination. If not, the request falls through to the rule engine (port rules → path rules → domain default).

You can disable short links per domain. A domain that only handles campaign redirects can keep short links on; a domain that only handles brand-level routing (e.g. brand-a.com → marketing site) can turn them off so the slug table never gets touched.

Slug conventions

• Case-insensitive lookup; the canonical slug is stored as you entered it.
• Alphanumeric plus - and _; no slashes in the slug itself.
• Per-team uniqueness — two teams can each have /promo on their own domains without colliding.

What we don't ship (yet)

We are honest: short-link support is the redirect substrate, not a full link-management product. We don't ship QR codes, link-in-bio microsites, or mobile-app deep-link reflectors. If you need those, Bitly or Rebrandly is still the right call. If you just need a small number of memorable slugs on top of a real branded domain, this is the cheap path.

301 vs 302 per link

Pick the HTTP status per slug. Use 301 when the destination is canonical (passes link equity for SEO) and 302 when the destination is temporary and you want clients and crawlers to keep checking the slug for changes.