Custom Short URLs

Now you can add a simple one-word page address for your web pages.

We finally got around to it: Custom one-word URLs. This is how it works:

• Go to a regular page on your website. And by that I mean any page that isn't News, Calendar, Contact, Gallery, etc.
• Edit the page.
• Click the white "Advanced Info" button.
• Type something in to the Short URL field (note the list of restricted words, like news, calendar, contact, gallery, etc).
• Click Save Changes.

The Short URL will come live in about a minute... when the web server has a second to incorporate it into the configuration files. If you try it right away and it doesn't work, get up, do a full-body stretch, walk around your chair twice (only twice!), sit down again, crack your knuckles, scratch your nose, and then try again.

Why Do You Need This?

Well, perhaps you have a page, such as "About Us." You might want the web page address (URL) to be yourdomain.com/about and not the longer (but SEO better) yourdomain.com/p/22/About-My-Company

Your website's navigation will continue to use the longer URL for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) purposes, but you can use the shorter URL in print advertising and on business cards if you want to focus on a specific page.

Examples can include:

• Greenfield-MA.gov/parking
• MontagueWebWorks.com/pricing
• AwesomeRealEstate.com/for-sale

The by-product of adding this capability is the fact that we've upgraded to the latest version of the Apache web server, and everyone's website is now 31.725% faster (by my reckoning).

BTW, Whats the Difference Between Nav Title and Page Title?

THAT, my friend, is a very good question.

• NavTitle: This is the title that shows up in your website's navigation, such as "About" or "Prices" or "Services."
• PageTitle: This is the title that appears at the top of the page once you've gone to it. It is optional when you are editing your page. If you leave it blank, the page will use the NavTitle.

You don't need to use the Page Title field, but in some cases it's helpful. A good example is the traditoinal "About" page. You may want to save space in the navigation bar on your website, but once people get to that page you want it titled "About [your company name here]" because just having the word "About" as the heading 1 title at the top of the page looks weird.

Why should you have something different for each? Well, as I said, having something short in the navigation title makes it more compact and easier to read, but having a longer title once you reach the page makes it appear more important.

AND, of course, Google loves words.

AND, thus, the website's navigation uses the longer Page Title in the URLs it produces.

Again, let's look at the "About" scenario:

If you set the page's NavTitle to "About" and the PageTitle to "About [your company name here]" you will wind up with a URL that looks like yourdomain.com/p/22/About-Your-Company-Name-Here

As I said, Google LOVES words, and long URLs that have lots of words in them. So, no matter what you do, your website's navigation bar will always use the longer stuff (for your own good).

But you can now create a custom URL that's really short for special pages that you want to have a short, printable URL.

Questions? Email Mik.