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PublishPress Shortlinks – Create Custom URLs for Posts – Share Previews for Draft Posts

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PublishPress Shortlinks – Create Custom URLs for Posts – Share Previews for Draft Posts

Description

With PublishPress Shortlinks you can create custom links for your posts. These links are brandable, trackable, and can have custom view permissions. You can share links for any type of content, even unpublished posts in draft status.

Key Features in PublishPress Shortlinks

✅ Automatically create shortlinks for your posts
✅ Use your own website domain for shortlinks
✅ Customize the slug for each shortlink
✅ Share shortlinks for posts in any status
✅ Add password protection to your shortlinks
✅ Automatically export your shortlinks on a specific date
✅ Choose from 301, 302, and 307 redirects
✅ Track who is clicking your shortlinks with analytics
✅ Generate a QR code for each shortlink to allow easy sharing
✅ Cloak your affiliate links

Automatically create shortlinks for your posts

PublishPress Shortlinks will automatically generate links for all your posts and pages. This makes it really easy to have shareable links for content. These shortlinks are available from the Posts screen and the Post Edit screen.

Use your own website domain for shortlinks

There’s no need to use an external service to build and track your links. With PublishPress Shortlinks, all your custom URLs use your own domain name. To avoid conflicts with any regular URLs on your site, there’s also a folder which is set to go” by default. This means that your custom URLs will look like this: https://example.com/go/shortlinks

Customize the slug for each shortlink

Every post has its own URL. By default, the final part of the URL will be a unique combination of 5 characters, so your shortlink will look like this: https://example.com/go/8vi3n. However, you can customize the slug so it looks like this: https://example.com/go/shortlinks.

More on customizing shortlinks

Share shortlinks for posts in any status

When you’re writing a draft post, do you sometimes need to share it with someone who doesn’t have access to your site? PublishPress Shortlinks is the answer. PublishPress Shortlinks allows you to share posts before you make them public. If you’ve written a draft of a post, you can share a preview with other people. You can protect these links by combining this with other features, including password protection and automatic expiry of links. This feature is similar to the Public Post Preview plugin, but with more features and customizable features.

More on shortlinks for unpublished posts

Add password protection to your shortlinks

Edit a shortlink and go to the Security” tab. You’ll be able to create a password for your sharable links. Nobody will be able to access the post via your shortlink unless they know the password.

More on passwords for shortlinks

Automatically expire your shortlinks on a specific date

Edit a shortlink and go to the Security” tab. You’ll be able to choose an expiration date for your shortlink. Anyone trying to visit your link after the expiration date will see the message, This link is expired.”

More on expiry dates for shortlinks

Choose from 301, 302, and 307 redirects

Edit a shortlink and go to the Redirection” tab. You can choose what kind of redirect is used for each link. 301 (Permanent) redirects are used to tell search engines that a requested URL has been permanently moved to another URL. If you’re confident that your target URL will never change, then use this redirect type. 302 and 307 (Temporary) redirects tell search engines that the requested URL has been moved temporarily, but will be back eventually.

More on redirects for shortlinks

Track who is clicking your shortlinks with analytics

PublishPress Shortlinks has a Logs feature that records everyone who clicks your links. These logs are then turned into analytics charts so you can see how popular each shortlink is.

More on logs for shortlinks

Generate a QR code for each shortlink to allow easy sharing

PublishPress Shortlinks will automatically create a QR code for each link. This makes it easy to download and share the QR code so people can visit your URL. This is great for advertisements, brochures, PDFs, restaurant menus, or anywhere you want to use a QR code.

More on QR codes for shortlinks

Cloak affiliate links

PublishPress Shortlinks is ideal for websites that have affiliate links in posts. You can manage, clean up, brand, and track your links. It’s a great tool for cloaking affiliate links. PublishPress Shortlinks is a great tool for marketers plugin for people who want to clean up their affiliate links.

Create Shortlinks via Keyboard Shortcuts

Click Ctrl/Cmd + / anywhere in the WordPress admin area to instantly create shortlinks.

Screenshots

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    You can get the shortlink for any post via the Posts screen.
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    The All Shortlinks screen allows you to edit any shortlink
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    The Shortlinks screen allows you to quickly edit any shortlink and download a QR code
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    The Redirection tab has settings for the redirection method, no follow, and sponsored options
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    You can password protect your shortlinks and add expiry dates
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    The All Logs screen will keep details of everyone accessing your links
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    Select which post statuses are accessible when visiting a PublishPress shortlink

FAQ

PublishPress Shortlinks is helpful to whom?

PublishPress Shortlinks is particularly helpful to affiliate marketers & website owners. It helps them to manage, clean up, brand, and track their links. In addition to affiliate marketing, PublishPress Shortlinks is also helpful to SEO marketers, bloggers, merchants, social media marketers, and anyone else who wants to easily take control of their link strategy.

Is it compatible with any WordPress theme?

Yes, absolutely! PublishPress Shortlinks mainly runs in the WordPress admin, so it is not dependent on any one WordPress theme.

Is PublishPress Shortlinks translatable?

Yes! PublishPress Shortlinks is ready for translation. You can easily translate PublishPress Shortlinks into the language of your choice.

Is PublishPress Shortlinks similar to other plugins?

It’s similar to the Public Post Preview plugin because it allows to share posts before you make them public.

It’s similar to link sharing plugins such as Bitly, Better Links, and URL Shortly because it enables you can create custom URLs for your posts.

It’s similar to affiliate link plugins such as PrettyLinks and Thirsty Affiliates because it enables you can create custom URLs for your posts.

Reviews

Read all 2 reviews

Contributors & Developers

“PublishPress Shortlinks – Create Custom URLs for Posts – Share Previews for Draft Posts” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.

Contributors

“PublishPress Shortlinks – Create Custom URLs for Posts – Share Previews for Draft Posts” has been translated into 3 locales. Thank you to the translators for their contributions.

Translate “PublishPress Shortlinks – Create Custom URLs for Posts – Share Previews for Draft Posts” into your language.

Interested in development?

Browse the code, check out the SVN repository, or subscribe to the development log by RSS.

Changelog

1.3.0 – 16 February 2026

  • REMOVED: Remove the General tab, #38
  • UPDATE: Make the Metabox a normal wordpress metabox, #17
  • UPDATE: Allow links to be automatically listed on the Links screen, #19
  • UPDATE: Add PublishPress Footer, #33
  • UPDATE: Add PublishPress Review Banners, #34
  • UPDATE: Move support box to the sidebar, #36
  • UPDATE: Add post status access control for shortlinks, #18
  • UPDATE: tinypress-1.2.6-Translation Updates ES-FR-IT, #41

1.2.6 – 27 January 2026

  • FIX: Function _load_textdomain_just_in_time error, #10
  • FIX: PHP 8.2+ dynamic property deprecation warnings in WPDK framework, #11
  • REMOVED: Remove the Browser extension feature, #15
  • REMOVED: Remove the Upcoming column, #16
  • REMOVED: Remove brand logo, #14
  • UPDATE: Update the Help and Supports feature, #13
  • UPDATE: Use PublishPress colors and design, #20
  • UPDATE: tinypress-1.2.5-Translation Updates ES-FR-IT, #30

1.2.5 – 14 March 2025

  • FIX: Readme updated with more content.

1.2.4 – 14 March 2025

  • NEW: Added keyboard shortcut functionality.
  • NEW: Released the pro version.

1.2.3 – 09 May 2024

  • FIX: WordPress version update.

1.2.2 – 23 January 2024

  • FIX: WordPress version update.

1.2.1 – 11 November 2023

  • FIX: Plugin feature check.

1.2.0 – 11 November 2023

  • FIX: WordPress version update.

1.1.10 – 02 November 2023

  • FIX: Check all features.

1.1.9 – 28 October 2023

  • FIX: WordPress version update.

1.1.8 – 12 October 2023

  • FIX: Readme text update.

1.1.7 – 05 October 2023

  • FIX: Security check.

1.1.6 – 30 September 2023

  • FIX: Readme text update.

1.1.5 – 17 September 2023

  • FIX: Plugin security check.

1.1.4 – 07 September 2023

  • FIX: Readme text update.

1.1.3 – 31 August 2023

  • FIX: Security update.

1.1.2 – 24 August 2023

  • FIX: Check all features.

1.1.1 – 17 August 2023

  • FIX: Security check.

1.1.0 – 10 August 2023

  • FIX: WordPress new version.

1.0.9 – 01 August 2023

  • FIX: Readme text update.

1.0.8 – 15 July 2023

  • FIX: Readme text update.

1.0.7 – 05 June 2023

  • FIX: Readme text update.

1.0.6 – 07 May 2023

  • FIX: New readme text update.

1.0.5 – 15 April 2023

  • FIX: New WordPress version update.

1.0.3 – 27 March 2023

  • FIX: New readme text update.

1.0.2 – 20 March 2023

  • FIX: Readme text update.

1.0.1 – 12 March 2023

  • FIX: Empty input fields validation.

1.0.0 – 12 November 2022

  • NEW: Initial release.