Vanity URLs

To create a vanity URL without the England or Scotland prefix, you can use the Vanity URL component in Contentful.

Only vanity URLs published in the England Contentful space will be created and become live. Any entries published in the Scotland space will not be output as part of the site build.

For anyone connected to the internal Shelter network, (anyone in the office on the virtual private network) they may need to add www. to the beginning of their published vanity URL to view it eg. www.shelter.org.uk/penny This will not be an issue for external users.

Using the Vanity URL component

• Use Add entry to create a new Vanity URL component

• In the Path field, add the path for your desired vanity URL. If you want to create a vanity URL like shelter.org.uk/penny you would add /penny here.

• You must use lowercase letters when setting the vanity URL. However, the system is set up so that if a team wanted to use a version of that vanity URL with some capitalisation, it will still work and direct to the correct page. e.g. if you set a page as /donatetoshelter, then a user typing /DonateToShelter or /DONATETOSHELTER will still be directed to the same place.

• Avoid dashes, hyphens, plus signs, ampersands, underscores or any other extra characters in an attempt to space out words.

  • If the vanity URL is more than one word, use shelter.org.uk/pennyanddexter rather than /PennyAndDexter or /penny-and-dexter or /penny_and_dexter.

  • If you feel this changes the user’s understanding of the vanity URL, use your discretion.

• In the URL field add the full URL (the destination) you want your vanity URL to redirect to. e.g. https://england.shelter.org.uk/donate?reserved_appeal_code=20210510-IG-10

This destination page must be live for the vanity URL to work.
If your destination URL is from a subdomain such as https://campaigns.shelter.org.uk the vanity URL you are creating will be from the main website.

www.shelter.org.uk/penny is your vanity URL rather than https://campaigns.shelter.org.uk/penny or www.campaigns.shelter.org.uk These will generate error codes. This goes for any Shelter subdomain.

• Campaign - add the UTM campaign ID. See this page for guidance.

• Medium - this relates to the UTM medium type (utm_medium). Dependent on where the vanity URL is appearing, it should be set to one of the following:

  • as a default, the medium should be set to direct

  • for print media campaigns, use print

  • for QR codes, use qrcode

  • for a TV campaign, use tv

  • if the vanity URL is being sent out by a corporate / celebrity partner, use partner_link
    

• Publish your vanity URL.

Your vanity URL is live! A utm_source tag will automatically be added and set to vanityurl, this is not configurable through the CMS.

• Test your vanity URL is working before sharing it.

  • The destination URL must be live and the vanity URL published in order to test.

  • Remember: For anyone connected to the internal Shelter network - anyone in the office on the VPN - they may need to add www. to the beginning of their published vanity URL in order to view it eg. www.shelter.org.uk/penny This will not be an issue for external users.