Shortened links? Expand them and save the URLs
Shortened links are a digital preservation and web archiving nightmare. You can imagine how they need to work:
- Create a unique short code for a given (target) URL (like a hash, but far far shorter)
- Pair the short code with your URL in a database.
- Create a redirect rule on the URL shortening server from the new source URL to the target URL.
- Send the shortened link to the caller, e.g.
shortURL.com/123badf00d - In-perpetuity: continue to pay for your domain; maintain the database; look after redirect rules during server migrations; ensure duplicate short-codes are not created.
A URL-shortening business in five easy steps.
But what does that mean for digital preservation?
