# URL redirects for URL shortening

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/url-redirects-for-url-shortening/691574>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [June 25, 2014, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/url-redirects-for-url-shortening/691574 "2014-06-25T00:25:50Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\
**Post date:** [June 25, 2014, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/url-redirects-for-url-shortening/691574/1 "2014-06-25T00:25:50Z")

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What’s the best way to go about this?

I have software on my website that I can use to make slideshows. It’s all admin’ed via a web-based admin page. The way this software creates the slideshows is there’s a general page like:

[noparse][mywebsite.com is available for purchase - Sedo.com](http://www.mywebsite.com/slideshow%5B/noparse%5D)

that is a menu of slideshows. If you click on a slideshow, you get redirected to something like [noparse][mywebsite.com is available for purchase - Sedo.com](http://www.mywebsite.com/slideshow/?/page/a12c/nameofslideshow%5B/noparse%5D)

Now, I want to give my clients direct links, but rather than giving them a URL like

[noparse][mywebsite.com is available for purchase - Sedo.com](http://www.mywebsite.com/slideshow/?/page/a12c/nameofslideshow%5B/noparse%5D)

I want to give them a URL like

[noparse][mywebsite.com is available for purchase - Sedo.com](http://www.mywebsite.com/nameofslideshow%5B/noparse%5D)

What’s the best way to do this, and is it possible to do it in such a manner that [noparse][mywebsite.com is available for purchase - Sedo.com](http://www.mywebsite.com/nameofslideshow%5B/noparse%5D) stays in the URL bar and doesn’t change to [noparse][mywebsite.com is available for purchase - Sedo.com](http://www.mywebsite.com/slideshow/?/page/a12c/nameofslideshow?%5B/noparse%5D) That part is not crucial, but it would be nice. I know I’ve done something like this before, but I can’t remember which URL redirect method I settled on.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\
**Post date:** [June 25, 2014, 6:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/url-redirects-for-url-shortening/691574/2 "2014-06-25T06:44:06Z")

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Well, I just ended up doing it with a simple redirect in .htaccess. If anyone has a better idea, feel free to add, but that works for now.

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**Author:** ![Isilder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/cc9497/32.png) [@Isilder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Isilder)\
**Post date:** [June 25, 2014, 1:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/url-redirects-for-url-shortening/691574/3 "2014-06-25T13:29:08Z")

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There may be config entries for the webserver’s config …

basically you want the rewrite rule, so that even though the slideshow software is producing the URL /slideshow/?/page/a12c/nameofslideshow, the web server is rewriting the outgoing URL TOO and so the slideshow software believes it lives at /slideshow/?/page/a12c/nameofslideshow , but the Outside world only sees /nameofslideshow