Tech Forum

My ward was previously using the URL shortening service tr.im (in part because the church firewalls blocked bit.ly at the time we started sharing a shortened link), but tr.im recently went out of business, and invalidated all shortened URLs that had gone through their site, including the link that ward members were using to access the weekly bulletin. It would be really nice if the Church could add an official URL shortening service for use by members, where the act of registering the shortened URL first checks that the redirection target will also make it through the church's firewall. It would reduce risk of links breaking when a third party company goes out of business, and might look better by making the short URL obvious that it was created by a church member. In the meantime, does anyone have suggestions for which URL shorteners actually work when logged in to the Church network?

Church headquarters is careful to apply its branding only to official Church materials, to prevent misleading information or incorrect doctrine distributed by members from being misinterpreted as official, and also as a legal protection against people who try to harm the Church by pretending to be an official source. Even local wards and stakes aren't allowed to use church branding (like the logo, for example – see Handbook 2, 21.1.10). Because of the Church's continual efforts to distinguish between official and unofficial, I doubt they would provide a URL shortener that any church member could use – a lot of members would be easily swayed into thinking that something with an "official" short URL is an official church website.

You have a fair point about a branded shortener being abused if it can point to arbitrary locations by an arbitrary person. But it is possible to create a branded shortener that will refuse to create a short link unless the person attempting to create a link has proper authentication rights (such as an lds.org content creator that can already produce official content) and/or if the link points within the lds.org site (where an unauthenticated user can create short links but only to what is already an official site), so that the branded links should never escape the walled garden of official content.

And even if an official branded shortener is unlikely to happen, it could still be helpful if the church could recommend the use of a particular non-branded URL shortener that will be permitted by the firewall when generating memorable names or shorter links into resources that will be helpful while teaching a lesson, sharing a google document between ward council members, etc, while still making it clear that such a recommendation does not make the short URL official. The fact that some shorteners are blacklisted at the firewall makes it harder to know which service to try, especially when a service works at home but fails at church. And if a particular service is recommended, it should also have a preview mode where it is easy enough to learn which website the short URL would redirect to without actually having to follow the short URL.

Don't mind me... just passing by to see if this is a thing so I don't have to use a third party shortener.