Custom Short Link URL for Tracking – Shorty Custom Domains

With Shorty, you can use a custom domain name that is separate from the installation domain. You can use this if you want to track multiple landing pages that are not a part of your WordPress blog, to provide more anonymity.

You may also want to do this if you need the overall tracking template URL to be much shorter – i.e. a “short URL” like Bitly.

1. The domain has to be used solely for the purpose of tracking with Shorty. Avoid domains that are already being used for something else. The other option if the domain is already being used is to set up a subdomain, and use the subdomain as the custom tracking domain.
2. We will use the domain redirect method. In the video I show you an example of using Namecheap, and redirecting the whole domain. If you want to just redirect a sub-domain, you can use a similar method. However if the domain is already used on a host, you have to create the subdomain and redirects in the host management software, Cpanel or Plesk for example.
3. The new custom domain will be used for the links and campaigns only. In effect, the custom domain you will setup will act as a redirect. Your links will be using it, but the conversion codes and postback / s2s codes will not. This is to avoid cookie issues for third-party domains.

So here’s how the actual tracking will work when someone clicks on your custom-domain-branded links:

Custom Link > WordPress Script URL > Landing Page

The whole process happens very fast, so the end-user is unlikely to notice the redirect to the WordPress URL where the actual Shorty script is installed. We have considered other options like CNAMEs, but from our experience most users have a hard time doing CNAME changes.

We believe this domain redirect method gives our users what they want – a spanky-looking URL – while making sure the actual tracking works flawlessly.