Summary
Whether you call them short URLS, friendly URLs, aliases or redirects they are all ways of renaming long and difficult to read URLs to your pages (that are filled with valuable information that everyone must have and can not live without, but can’t click more than once to get to). Best practice dictates no more than a two to three levels of clicks. Therefore, if your users need to click once or twice you won’t lose them. Not every page needs to have a shortened URL.
Body
Friendly URL Request and Use Guidelines @ WSSU
Purpose:
This article will help the reader understand what a friendly URL, short URL, vanity URL is and is not. When you may need one, and the parameters and guidelines around their use.
Getting Started:
Whether you call them short URLS, friendly URLs, aliases or redirects they are all ways of renaming long and difficult to read URLs to your pages (that are filled with valuable information that everyone must have and can not live without, but can’t click more than once to get to). Best practice dictates no more than a three to four levels of clicks. Therefore, if your users need to click once or twice you won’t lose them. Not every page needs to have a shortened URL.
When you may need a short URL created by Web Support Services:
1) If the actual URL is extremely long (longer than 100 characters) and/or non-descriptive
2) If you will be using the information on print material
3) If your URL is for a marketing campaign that has an end and start date.
When you do not need a short URL created by Web Support Services:
1) There is already a friendly URL in use one click above the desired page.
2) If you are referencing the page on social media. They have their own methods of URL shortening.
3) If your page is already in the main navigation of the WSSU website.
4) If the actual URL is less than 60 characters.
5) Just because someone else has one.
Alternatives to Web Support Services supported short URLs:
1) Learn your website
2) Use keywords or relevant words as anchor text in place of the actual URL for aesthetics purposes in emails
and documents.
3) Use bookmarking
4) Use the Search features (there are actually three of them: general, directory, and Find My Degree)
Short URLs, although making it easier to access what might otherwise be a very long URL or user-space on an ISP server, add an additional layer of complexity to the process of retrieving web pages. Every access requires more requests thereby increasing latency, the time taken to access the page, and also the risk of failure, since the shortening service may become unavailable. Another operational limitation of URL shortening services is that browsers do not resend additional data when a redirect is encountered. Techniques to overcome these issues present security and scaling challenges, and are therefore not recommended.