I wanted to share a simple idea — they are often the best — for managing your calendar links. Instead of sending a Calendly or Google Calendar url use your own domain and redirect it. Or buy yourself a shorter domain for redirects.
If you’re like me you’re always switching between services and testing out all the various tools available to us. It’s not super helpful to be switching up your booking links as often as I switch tools. Additionally, these calendar links aren’t the cleanest, prettiest, or easiest to remember.
So instead of sharing a long URL that I can’t recall in real time, I instead used a redirection plugin to create a redirect from jesse.blog/book -> https://app.usemotion.com/meet/jesse-wp-cloud/bookingurl. Quick Note: I did refrain from sharing the actual URL’s with the entire Internet just now, but you get the point.
This has two major benefits:
- I can recall the URL at any time and it’s easy to write on a business card or tell someone face-to-face.
- If and when I change the booking link my personal booking link doesn’t need to change with it. I just update the redirect.
Creating a redirect is really simple. This is what it looks like in Rank Math. Just fill out the tail end of the url after your domain “book” in the Source URLs field, and the destination url below that and hit save.
You may have the same concern I had about using my own personal domain, which leads to my personal blog, for professional bookings. I originally thought this might detract from the WP Cloud brand but in the end, since jesse.blog is powered by WP Cloud and I work for Automattic where we celebrate our personal blogs and online presence it felt right to use jesse.blog. If you have these concerns then use a domain that relates to your corporate brand. You can create redirects off your main domain, or buy a shorter one specifically for this purpose.
One of our WP Cloud partners, Porkbun, just celebrated reaching four million domains registered. And I had them on the podcast to talk about why owning domains is so important. This is just one way you can own your real-estate on the Internet and I suggest if you don’t have a solid domain you go get one; they’re cheap.
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