Custom URL Shortener
Brandable Links. Custom Domains.What is a custom shortened URL?
If the Good News URL shortener short URLs were configured as your average URL shortener, they would have a format similar to the following:
hopto.it/2PuuQnM
Not very revealing as to what the link is for. If you were using the short links for marketing or business purposes, it would give you no branding. The links would not be tied to your brand.
However, with the free version of the Good News URL Shortener, you can customize your shortened URLs, allowing you to brand them.
There are two brandable aspects of the shortened URLs: The subdomain and the slug. The format is as follows:
brand.hopto.it/slug
This format allows you to both brand the link for your business and give an indication of what the link is for.
Example. Let's say you own a pizza restaurant called Papa's Pizzeria and wanted to offer patrons a link to a discount coupon. With the Good News URL Shortener, your link could look like this:
papas.hopto.it/discount
Much better! It is a branded, customized short URL that tells people who you are and what they will get by going to that link.
Unlimited customizable shortened URLs are available for all users. You do not need a premium account for this URL format.
Custom Domain
Let's take it a step further. Let's say you wanted to replace the hopto.it domain with your own. Maybe you want the domain to be papaspizza.com instead. With a premium account, this is possible. Your custom short URL would look like this now:
papaspizza.com/discount
Now we're cooking with fire! Fully customizable shortened URLs!
Premium Good News accounts support an unlimited number of custom domains.
How It Works
The custom domain feature is a Bring Your Own Domain arrangement. This means you can register your domain anywhere you like, allowing you to get some of those special top level domains, like .it or .to or .io at your favorite registrar of choice, giving you hundreds of domain options in addition to .com or .net.
Click here to obtain preconfigured domain through Good News.
Once you have purchased the domain, all that is required to use it is to register it with your Good News account and update the DNS record for the domain to point the A record to the IP address that you will be provided. Nearly all domain registrars these days include DNS management as part of their service. Or, you can use a DNS service such as Amazon Route 53, which is a dedicated DNS service provider.
SSL
What if you want your custom domain to be secured by SSL so that it uses https:// instead of http://?
No problem. An SSL certificate is provided for each of your custom domains at no charge. Just send in a support request indicating the domain you want to have the certificate for and we will set it up. The process requires that ownership of the domain is verified. This is done by setting a DNS CNAME record. This is done in the same place and same way that the A record is set up in the DNS manager. We will provide you with the value to set for the CNAME record, at which time it will be verified and become active.
With unlimited custom shortened URLs and custom domains, the Good News URL shortener is the best value you will find.
Where To Get A Domain
Purchase the domain at your favorite registrar. A couple low cost suggestions with wide variety of TLDs: internetbs.net and namecheap.com . Both have DNS management and are the cheapest around. Some TLDs (like .com or .net) are available at one but not the other. So look around for a registrar to get the exact TLD you want.
A good place to get some of the country code TLDs like .it for Italy without being a citizen of Italy is www.marcaria.com