Using Shorty Link

This page covers day-to-day use after Shorty Link is deployed and you have an admin passkey.

Sign in

Open /admin on your deployed hostname. Sign in with the passkey you registered during onboarding.

If a teammate sent you an invite link, follow the invite URL first to register your passkey, then return to /admin.

  1. From the admin dashboard, open Links and click New link.
  2. Enter the target URL — the destination users will be redirected to.
  3. Choose a slug:
    • Type your own (letters, numbers, dashes).
    • Or click Suggest to get an AI-generated slug from the target URL. This requires the optional Cloudflare AI binding; without it, suggestions fall back to a deterministic generator.
  4. Optionally pick a hostname. If you manage multiple domains, this binds the slug to a specific host. Leave blank to use the default host.
  5. Optionally choose a redirect status code:
    • 301 — permanent, cacheable
    • 302 — temporary (default)
    • 303 — see other (forces GET)
    • 307 — temporary, preserves method
    • 308 — permanent, preserves method
  6. Save. The link is live immediately.
  • Edit changes the target, status code, or slug.
  • Disable marks a link inactive without deleting it. Inactive links return a 404 instead of redirecting, but their click history is preserved.
  • Delete removes the link and its history permanently.

View click stats

Open any link’s detail page to see total clicks and recent activity. Click counts are tracked in waitUntil so they never block the redirect itself.

Manage domains

Open Domains in the admin UI to register hostnames you’ve routed to the Worker.

Redirect resolution is two-step:

  1. Try the exact hostname plus slug first.
  2. Fall back to the default hostname with the same slug.

This means the same slug can mean different things on different brands — /launch on links.brand-a.com can point somewhere different than /launch on links.brand-b.com.

To add a new hostname:

  1. In Cloudflare, route the hostname to the Worker (custom domain or route).
  2. In the admin UI, create a domain entry with that hostname.
  3. Mark exactly one domain as the default if you want hostname-agnostic fallbacks.

Invite a teammate

Open Users → Invites and click New invite. Send the invite link to your teammate. They open the link, register a passkey, and become an admin.

To revoke an unused invite, delete it from the invites list.

Create an API key

  1. Open API Keys and click New key.
  2. Give it a name (e.g. CI, marketing-tooling).
  3. Optionally set an expiry in days.
  4. Copy the key immediately — it’s only shown once.

Use the key in API requests via either header:

x-api-key: sl_your_key_here
Authorization: Bearer sl_your_key_here

Revoke a key from the same page when it’s no longer needed.

Use the Admin API

Every admin action is also available over HTTP under /api/admin/*. See the Admin API reference for the full endpoint list. Quick examples:

Create a link:

curl -X POST https://links.example.com/api/admin/links \
  -H 'content-type: application/json' \
  -H 'x-api-key: sl_your_key_here' \
  -d '{"slug":"pricing","targetUrl":"https://example.com/pricing","statusCode":308}'

List links with paging:

curl 'https://links.example.com/api/admin/links?page=1&pageSize=25&active=all' \
  -H 'x-api-key: sl_your_key_here'

Update a link:

curl -X PATCH https://links.example.com/api/admin/links/<id> \
  -H 'content-type: application/json' \
  -H 'x-api-key: sl_your_key_here' \
  -d '{"targetUrl":"https://example.com/new-pricing"}'

Manage your sessions

Open Profile → Sessions to see every active session signed in with your passkey. From there you can:

  • Revoke one — sign out a specific device.
  • Revoke others — keep the current session, sign out everywhere else.
  • Sign out current — end this session.

Tips

  • Keep the default redirect status as 302 unless you have a specific reason to use 301 or 308. Permanent redirects are aggressively cached by browsers and are hard to undo.
  • For host-agnostic short links, only use the default-host fallback. For brand-specific links, always pick a hostname when creating.
  • Rotate API keys periodically. Use one key per integration so revocation is targeted.
  • Inactive links keep their slug reserved — re-enable instead of recreating if you want to keep history.