Creating Your First Pretty Link

Video Tutorial:

Pretty Links makes it very easy to create your Pretty Links. Follow these simple steps to create your very first Pretty Links:

1. Click on the “Add New Link” tab of the plugin. You can also add a link through the “Add Link” link on the Pretty Links tab. We also have a cool new feature that allows you to create a new link while in Visual Editor Mode when creating a new page or post. To learn more about that click here.
2. Set the required features of your Pretty Links:
   • Redirection– type of redirection you want. To learn about the different redirection types click here.
   • Target URL– this the URL that your Pretty Links will redirect to.
   • Pretty Links– edit how your Pretty Links will appear by either leaving the generated Pretty Links slug or creating your own.
3. For your own management needs, add a title and/or notes to your Pretty Links.
   • Title– enter a custom title or leave blank and the plugin will attempt to create a title from URL entered. Titles entered will appear in the Pretty Links tab of the plugin
   • Notes– use this section to enter any helpful information for you. This feature isn't currently utilized on the front end of site.
4. Click on either the “Basic”, “Advanced” or “Pro” tab and it will reveal additional menus to add even more characteristics to your Pretty Links.

5. Advanced Tab:
   • Redirection– This is the method of redirection for your link.
   • Target URL– This is the URL that your Pretty Link will redirect to.
   • Pretty Link– This is how your pretty link will appear. You can edit the Pretty Link slug here.
   • Notes– This is a field where you can enter notes about a particular link. This notes field is mainly for your own link management needs. It isn't currently used anywhere on the front end.
6. Advanced Tab:
   • No Follow– add the nofollow and noindex attributes to your links http redirect header.
   • Parameter Forwarding– forward parameters passed to this link onto the target URL.
   • Tracking– enable this option to get reports on clicks for your link
7. Pro Tab:
   • Expire– check this option to have your Pretty Links expire after a specified amount of clicks or on a certain date. You can learn more about this here.
   • Keywords– here you can enter a comma separated list of key words or phrases that will replace this link on your posts and pages.
   • URL Replacements– here you can put a comma separated list of URLS that will replace this link on your posts and pages. To learn more about this replacement type or the previous one, click here.
   • Head Scripts– enter in or even open graph meta tags to add those characteristics to your link. This can help you see usage patterns on social media sites and help those social sites recognize the featured content of your Pretty Links.
   • Dynamic Redirection– Add one of four distinct redirection types: Rotation, Geolocation, Technology, and Time. Rotation allows you to send users to an unlimited amount of different links based on weighted percentages that you've set and do split testing on them to see which ones are the most effective. Geolocation allows you to send users to different links based on their countries (states and provinces currently not included). Technology redirects allow you to send users to different places based on the devices and technology they are using. Finally, Time period redirects allow you to send users to different URL's depending on the date they are accessing the URL.
8. Now that you've added in all of the features that you want, don't forget to click the orange “create” button at the bottom of the page!

Congratulations! You've just learned how to create your very own Pretty Links using Pretty Links!