Episode Transcript
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0:00
Six cautions plus some tips about using redirects in podcasting.
0:11
Thank you for joining me for The Audacity to Podcast.
0:14
I'm Daniel J. Lewis. Redirects come in multiple types.
0:18
When misused, they can cause some major problems.
0:21
As even happened to me recently.
0:24
So here are some warnings to watch for whenever you use redirects.
0:28
Now if you're thinking, "What in the world is a redirect?" or you want to learn more
0:31
about the different types of redirects, when to use them, when not to use them, and such,
0:34
then check out my past episode and article, "Redirects and How to Use Them in Podcasting."
0:40
I've got the link to that in the notes for this episode, and if you want those notes
0:43
or to follow along for this episode, they're a simple tap or swipe away inside your podcast
0:48
app or go to theaudacitytopodcast.com/redirectcautions.
0:54
As a quick disclosure, some of the products I mention I do have affiliate relationships
0:59
with, so if you purchase through my links and they're qualifying purchases, I do earn
1:03
a commission from those. But nonetheless, not all of them are like that, and regardless, I recommend things I
1:08
truly believe in, regardless of earnings.
1:11
So with that out of the way, let's jump in.
1:13
Caution number one. 301 redirects are "permanent" (we could put quotation marks around that) and "cached".
1:22
In podcasting, we throw around the term 301 redirect or permanent redirect, often without
1:28
realizing what that actually means. It's almost like it's a buzzword. But a 301 redirect
1:34
and a permanent redirect, it's the same thing. It is, or at least it's assumed to be, permanent.
1:40
That's the big keyword here.
1:43
I often use the physical mail or US post office metaphor when explaining redirects. Think
1:48
Think of a permanent redirect as a change of address notice sent back to everyone who
1:54
mails you something.
1:56
Non-permanent or temporary redirects would be more like just simply forwarding your mail
2:00
for a short time, but a permanent redirect is saying "this has changed".
2:06
It is essentially telling all the podcast apps out there "this thing has moved to
2:10
over there. Please stop looking here and always look there instead.
2:14
So don't look at me again".
2:16
That's what a 301 permanent redirect is supposed to do.
2:20
This is great when you actually made a permanent move, or at least intend for it to be permanent.
2:26
Like when you permanently move homes and change your address.
2:29
That's when you want that change of address notice to go out to everyone who sends you
2:34
stuff at your old address so they stop sending it to the old address and start sending it
2:38
to the new address. The same thing with 301 permanent redirects.
2:42
use it when you assume your move is permanent and you want all of the apps and services
2:48
to stop looking at an old URL and start looking at the new URL. But if you ever change your
2:55
mind or even worse, make a mistake in the redirect, that redirect will be followed and
3:02
the old URL will stop being checked. So for example, if you make a /feedback page that
3:08
301 permanently redirects somewhere else, then even if you change where /feedback goes,
3:15
any app that previously loaded /feedback will bypass it altogether and go straight to the
3:22
destination it has saved in its cache. Now that is if it did cache that redirect. And
3:28
the idea is that 301 redirects are supposed to be cached. But that cache is sometimes
3:34
weird, but you should assume it never will be. However, this doesn't apply for anyone
3:39
visiting your redirect for the first time because nothing's been cached yet. This is
3:44
why whenever you have weird redirect issues in a browser, I highly recommend try a different
3:49
browser or try an incognito or private browser that has no cookies, no cache, anything like
3:55
that inside it to see if the redirect works differently there. If it does, then you're
3:59
running into that caching issue. So if you get your 301 permanent redirect wrong and
4:05
you don't fix it immediately, like within a few minutes, the best thing to do is to
4:11
also redirect the incorrect destination to the correct one. And unfortunately, that's
4:19
not always possible. Thus, I recommend, if possible, you make your redirect a 307 or
4:25
302 temporary redirect, test it over a few days, not just a few minutes, and then when
4:31
you know everything is working however it's designed to work, whether it's your podcast
4:35
feed, a link that you're referring to, or anything like that, then change it to a 301
4:40
permanent redirect, if it needs to be a permanent redirect, that is.
4:45
And it might not need to be a 301, maybe it shouldn't be.
4:49
Most of this time it probably shouldn't be a 301 redirect, unless it's your RSS feed.
4:54
Caution number two, your redirect destinations might change or just disappear.
5:01
Little story time here. Contrary to the Stanley Cup craze of spring 2024, my favorite water thermos has been a
5:08
stainless steel Contigo Ashland vacuum insulated auto spout water bottle.
5:15
That is this. Ooh, you hear that?
5:18
That nice click? That spring sound?
5:21
That is the sound of hydration. Mmm.
5:27
Wonderful water coming from a great spout with a straw and it has this nice sealing
5:32
lid and it has...
5:36
You probably can't tell that that sounds different, but it is a nice carabiner clip for the water bottle.
5:41
I love this water bottle. I've had it since 2019.
5:44
Well, actually not this specific one, but this kind of water bottle because the one
5:50
I've had since 2019, and it even went with me and got temporarily confiscated when I
5:56
got to see the President speak. I did get the bottle back, but then I lost it. And I
6:04
think it was at a mall while my son and I were waiting for my broken-down car to be
6:08
towed. I thought I could simply reorder that water bottle because I love it so much, and
6:13
I thought maybe I'd get it for close to the original $10 price I paid, adjusting for
6:19
the massive inflation we've had. But no, that specific water bottle has a new version
6:24
that I don't like as much. It doesn't have that really nice carabiner belt clip
6:28
built into it and it just didn't seem like it would be as nice. And the original water
6:34
bottle, which I eventually did find, was $45 when I wanted to order it instead of the $10
6:42
I originally paid a few years ago.
6:44
So here's what makes this relevant to redirects.
6:47
The first place I went to reorder that water bottle was from my Amazon order history, where
6:52
I could click on the product link and then view that product page again and potentially
6:57
reorder it. But when I did that, my heart was initially crushed because that original link currently
7:05
says "Currently Unavailable".
7:09
No. No.
7:11
Now imagine if I had redirected to that product page with a 301 permanent redirect.
7:18
Anyone clicking through my link might have their hopes dashed just like I did.
7:22
This is why I highly recommend that any redirect to ANY URL you don't control should be a
7:29
307 temporary redirect.
7:32
A 302 redirect is also temporary and works fine, but use a 307 if you have the choice
7:37
between a 302 and a 307. Otherwise just one of them is fine for you. It's not,
7:43
it's a technical difference that really isn't that big of a deal. Just go for
7:47
307 if you can. If I had been smartly promoting that water bottle with
7:51
something like a /waterbottle redirect, I could easily change its
7:55
destination when the product URL changes or point back to a page on my own site
8:00
with a note about the product, like if it was discontinued and completely
8:05
unavailable. Now in case you're wondering, I never did find my water bottle and I did not pay $45
8:11
from Amazon. I got on Facebook Marketplace and found one in fair condition. It's a little banged
8:16
up and scratched but it was only $12 shipped and I jumped on that. I have it again and I am happy.
8:24
I am not losing this thing again. I'm really tempted to get an AirTag specifically for my
8:29
water bottle so I never lose this one again because I really like it. So bringing it back
8:33
Back again though to redirects. This whole thing of pointing back to a page or changing
8:40
where that redirect go, that's easy to do with temporary redirects because they never
8:46
get cached. So even if you used my redirect yesterday, then I changed it last night, and
8:53
you use the same redirect URL today, you would be taken to the correct destination because
9:00
your browser would not have cached where that redirect went.
9:04
I love that PrettyLinks Pro has recently added a new feature to monitor all the redirects
9:09
you create and alert you when any of them point to a broken URL.
9:14
So you could then go through and change where they link to, or put them so that they point
9:20
to a page on your site where maybe you recommend an alternative instead of that thing.
9:26
I've done that for one of my own URLs for something that I used to highly recommend
9:32
that then disappeared and the company owes me a lot of money for affiliate sales that
9:39
I referred to them and they never paid me that money.
9:42
And the company just outright disappeared. The person disappeared.
9:44
I can't find them. So I don't know what happened.
9:47
But my redirects for that thing now point to a different page explaining why I no longer
9:54
recommend that thing and instead recommend a different thing.
9:57
So that kind of thing could be really important to both your audience and any kind of affiliate
10:04
income you hope to make. If all of your links break, then you're not going to earn anything from them.
10:10
But if you can point them to the new version or update those links, you can then make sure
10:15
that they work even for the people who previously visited your link.
10:18
They will still be taken to the correct location if they visit that link again.
10:23
And by the way, I know in Pretty Links Pro and another plugin I'm going to mention in
10:28
a little bit, Redirection plugin, you can set the redirection type if you want it to
10:33
be a temporary or a permanent. So general rule, temporary for anything that points to anything you don't control.
10:42
Caution number three, most redirects bypass content.
10:46
This is both a caution and actually a blessing.
10:49
However your redirect is placed, and I'm not referring to the iTunes new feed URL RSS
10:55
tag, because that's not actually a redirect, that's an RSS tag, the redirect will be
10:58
followed before any of that URL's content is loaded.
11:04
So if your redirect is your old podcast RSS feed pointing to a new podcast RSS feed, anything
11:12
you put in that old feed will be completely ignored.
11:16
That's a caution because it means your audience won't get anything you put in that feed.
11:21
Especially not any announcement of the feed change, if that's even necessary, which usually
11:26
it's not necessary to announce that your feed changed.
11:29
If you're redirecting your old feed to your new feed, podcast apps will just follow it.
11:33
So you don't have to tell your audience and you certainly don't have to try and put an
11:37
announcement episode out in your old feed because if you're redirecting your old feed
11:41
that announcement episode won't even be downloaded.
11:45
This is why you should put the iTunes New Feed URL RSS tag in your new feed if you ever
11:52
change podcast feed URLs.
11:54
And yes, the tag should actually point to itself, the RSS feed URL that it is in, as
12:03
a sort of confirmation that this is the new feed URL.
12:09
That's why the tag is called New Feed URL.
12:11
It can be used as a sort of redirect, but really the best thing to do is redirect to
12:16
a new feed and in that new feed is where this new tag goes.
12:21
You don't put this new feed URL in your old RSS feed if your old RSS feed is redirecting
12:27
because this tag won't even be loaded.
12:30
The redirect will simply be followed. This tag is more of a confirmation that the redirect has already been followed.
12:37
It's like I feel that it's mostly Midwestern drivers who do this, who use their turn signal
12:43
to indicate and confirm that they have already changed lanes.
12:48
Just in case you were wondering, "Did you just change a lane?
12:50
Oh, I see. Yeah, you turned on your turn signal there to indicate that you did already just change lanes."
12:57
That's what the new feed URL tag does.
13:00
But this is also a blessing because it means you don't actually need an RSS feed to exist
13:05
at that address once you're redirecting it. In fact, you can have nothing at that address
13:13
except the redirect. That's how nearly all redirection tools do it anyway. You don't have
13:19
to create pages or posts to redirect. You simply create the redirect. And the server intercepts
13:25
that request for that particular path or domain and it redirects without loading any of the content
13:32
from that page. If you want or need to give some information before the redirect, then create a
13:39
page at that URL you share and then have the redirect linked from that page. For example,
13:48
that's where I've been building for a lot of the podcasting tools I frequently recommend.
13:52
Consider Captivate for example. If you visit theaudacitytopodcast.com/captivate to sign up for
13:58
Captivate podcast hosting, which I do highly recommend, you're no longer immediately
14:03
redirected to my affiliate link for Captivate.
14:06
But instead, you land on my page that briefly explains why I recommend Captivate.
14:12
And I can turn that page into a bigger resource page, like maybe eventually showing demonstrations
14:18
or comparisons or little tutorials or anything like that on that page before you actually
14:23
sign up for Captivate. And then you can click on a button on that page to use my affiliate link to sign up for Captivate.
14:33
And fun fact, that button is still a redirect.
14:37
Instead of theaudacitytopodcast.com/captivate it is theaudacitytopodcast.com/go/captivate.
14:46
But what I use anywhere else, emails, show notes, if I say something in a podcast, I
14:52
I would just say the /captivate link, not the /go/captivate because the /captivate takes
14:58
people to my special page.
15:00
It used to go straight to my affiliate link, but now it goes to a page and that page has
15:07
a link to my affiliate link.
15:09
Caution number four. You might someday rename your redirect.
15:13
I've previously shared why you should stop saying brand names in your podcast.
15:18
If you haven't heard that episode, go back and listen to it.
15:21
I highly recommend it. I've got a link to it in the notes for this episode as well at theaudacitytubepodcast.com/redirectcautions.
15:29
But you should probably not say brand names, unless absolutely necessary.
15:34
Maybe you heard or read that and decided to change your /patreon redirecting URL to a
15:40
generic /support URL or something else, or you had some similar situation where you were
15:45
telling people visit / and a brand name, so you changed it to / some generic term.
15:51
While that's great that you did that, it still breaks all your past calls to action
15:57
that used that /patreon URL or whatever that brand name URL was.
16:02
For this reason, if you ever want to someday rename your redirect, regardless of whether
16:07
you've only typed it in your notes or you've also spoken it in your podcast, I highly recommend
16:13
that you make a new redirect and point both the new and old redirects to the correct location.
16:21
And take this chance to ensure they're both 307 or 302 temporary redirects as long as
16:26
you're editing them. Alternatively, you could actually point one redirect to the other. So instead of always
16:33
having to change the destination for multiple redirects, and all of these multiple redirects
16:38
going to the same one link, you only change the last one. But just don't get crazy with this.
16:46
I recommend making no more than two or three layers of a redirect. So that could look something
16:52
like this. /patreon, your original URL that you shared, redirects to /support, that's the new URL,
17:00
and then that is redirecting to that final destination, whatever it is, whether it is
17:05
still Patreon with something else. And we could put "final" in quotation marks when referring to
17:11
that final destination because it's possible that even that URL gets redirected, as actually happens
17:18
with a whole lot of affiliate URLs that bounce through multiple trackers before landing on the
17:24
actual final destination. Caution number five. Correcting URLs you said in old episodes is
17:32
practically impossible. If you do rename a redirect, like switching from /patreon to /support,
17:39
don't even think about editing the audio or video with all your past calls to action.
17:45
This is why it's important to get it right in the first place and make a future-friendly generic
17:52
URL you can change whenever you want without breaking past calls to action. But if you didn't
17:57
plan ahead like that, and I've made that mistake countless times too, make sure all your old calls
18:04
to action still work. That could be either with a redirect or a note and the correct link on the
18:11
resulting destination. So even if you said a patreon.com URL in your podcast and that is not
18:19
a redirect, it's someone else's domain that you shared, someone else's brand name that you pointed
18:24
to in your podcast, even if you shared that, you might be able to leave that page online
18:31
but with a prominent note that your support options have moved and with a link to the
18:35
new location. But make sure that link is also a redirect in case you ever change things again and make
18:43
it a generic redirect that you will always be able to control and change if you need to.
18:49
Question #6. Reusing things you redirected from is a bad idea. And this was my 2024 redirect
18:57
mistake. So I need to illustrate this with a story from my own recent mistake.
19:03
Several years ago, Blueberry launched Podcast Mirror, a free and much better podcast-focused
19:10
alternative to FeedBurner, which would help podcasters who needed the stability and performance
19:16
of a feed always online, distributed through a CDN, and didn't use any of the bandwidth
19:20
of their website, especially PowerPress customers.
19:23
But with all the features coming from Podcasting 2.0 and the dragging feet of many outdated
19:29
podcasting tools and hosting providers (feedburner is actually one of them by the way) Blueberry
19:33
decided to add more features to Podcast Mirror, which could let you add Podcasting 2.0 features
19:41
to a feed that didn't already have them. Just like how we used to recommend using FeedBurner
19:47
to turn a normal blog into a valid podcast feed. And a funny side note, I was actually
19:53
thinking of creating my own service like this as soon as I learned about Podcasting 2.0
19:58
and I even registered a great domain for it but I never got around to building that product.
20:03
And I'm not sure if I ever will. Maybe someday. But who knows.
20:07
These upgrades were great on the Podcast Mirror site, but it also meant that Blueberry would
20:11
stop offering a basic Podcast Mirror service for free.
20:16
Not even their plain Feed Mirror service that they advised so many podcasters to use and
20:23
so many podcasters switched to from FeedBurner.
20:27
And this upgrade to Podcast Mirror went in effect during my few month podcast hiatus
20:32
while I doubled down on launching Podgagement in the second half of 2023.
20:37
So when I published a new episode in January 2024, I faced a news flash.
20:43
My feed wouldn't update anymore because I hadn't upgraded to a paid Podcast Mirror subscription.
20:50
To be blunt, I think this was a horrible betrayal of trust from Blueberry because so many people
20:58
had switched to it because they built it up as this is a free alternative to help you
21:03
keep your podcast online to help with these performance issues on your feed, help with
21:08
this stuff, and I think there might have even been some promises spoken about it always
21:13
being free. So I did feel like this was a betrayal of trust on some level from them.
21:21
But at least all podcasters could easily redirect away from Podcast Mirror. And if you have
21:27
your podcast feed on Podcast Mirror and you haven't updated your podcast, and you haven't
21:33
to a paid subscription, your feed does still work. You just can't publish new
21:38
content to it. So I think that is a balance to this. That it's not like they
21:42
suddenly broke everyone's RSS feeds. That would be horrible. If they did that, then
21:48
Blueberry would be off my recommendations. That would be beyond
21:51
forgiveness. They just did things in a way that I think wasn't the best thing.
21:56
But of course with costs and inflation and all of this other stuff, this might
22:01
have been something that they just had to do.
22:04
So for me, having a tight cash flow, I decided to redirect my podcast mirror feed to a feed
22:10
burner feed and that feed burner feed doing nothing but simply mirroring or proxying my
22:17
feed for performance reasons. And a little side note that you might not have realized, if you put anything in your
22:22
RSS feed and run it through feed burner, feed burner will just pass it straight through
22:27
Unless you use anything in FeedBurner to overwrite that thing.
22:31
So if you, for example, have Podcasting 2.0 features in your RSS feed and you run that
22:36
through FeedBurner, FeedBurner passes those Podcasting 2.0 tags straight through.
22:42
And so they still work in your FeedBurner feed.
22:45
But I very quickly discovered that FeedBurner no longer offers a ping service or a manual
22:53
refresh button, leaving me with no way to trigger an update of my RSS feed.
22:59
So consequently, my episodes were not going out to podcast apps for several hours after
23:06
I published it to my feed. I could look at my source feed and I saw it, the episode is right there.
23:11
And I'd look at the feed burner feed and the episode was not right there.
23:15
It was not there at all for several hours.
23:18
It was very frustrating. So I realized the error of my ways and realized why did I even think I could trust Feedburner again.
23:27
And crazy me, I decided to try building my own feed proxy service.
23:31
But after more than four hours into it, might have even been a whole day of work into it,
23:37
I realized I'd wasted more time, and you know that whole time is money thing, more
23:42
time trying to DIY it and thus lost more potential income than if I'd just paid the reasonable
23:50
yearly fee Blueberry now charges for Podcast Mirror. It's not that much. It's not even
23:56
as much as a podcast hosting account. So I emailed Blueberry on my digital hands and
24:01
knees begging them to take me back. We worked out a deal and I'm back on Podcast Mirror
24:07
now. So hooray for that! But here was my big mistake. I insisted on having my original
24:14
feed URL again. I should not have done that. Why was that bad? Because here's what the
24:20
301 permanent redirects looked like. PodcastMirror was redirecting to FeedBurner and then I set
24:27
FeedBurner to redirect to PodcastMirror, the same PodcastMirror URL. Do you see the problem?
24:35
If anything had cached podcastmirrors301 redirect on my feed, it would enter what's called a
24:40
redirect loop, where it's just this redirecting to that, redirecting back to this, redirecting
24:46
to that, this, that, this, that, this, that, back and forth, back and forth, until apps
24:50
just say "No! Enough!
24:52
We've entered a redirect loop, we're not going to do this anymore, I quit.
24:56
I'm out of here." I suspect this is why I saw a big drop in downloads per episode after I changed the
25:00
redirect. And this was in February 2024, so it had nothing to do with the overhyped iOS 17 update.
25:07
I actually made it even a little worse by momentarily redirecting to my PowerPress feed,
25:13
but not the normal PowerPress feed, but a URL that bypasses any redirects from PowerPress.
25:19
Because I was thinking, well my PowerPress feed was probably 301 redirecting, so I probably
25:23
shouldn't redirect to yet another redirect. So I redirected to the one that bypasses the redirects,
25:29
But then I realized, well, I need to eventually make it so everyone is back on the podcast mirror
25:36
feed. And so this made it really difficult to actually re-redirect when I wanted to. I had to
25:43
go through Cloudflare and do special page rules and other stuff and even just using Cloudflare
25:48
in the process might have broken some things with my RSS feed too. So if by any chance you're hearing
25:55
this and you look at your podcast app and my episodes aren't there, then you might
26:00
be somewhere in this redirect loop. Reach out to me if you've noticed that, but how
26:06
would you know because you might not receive this episode if you're stuck in that redirect
26:11
loop. In all of this, my feed URL didn't actually matter. Do you even know what my
26:18
feed URL is? Did you even know I was using Podcast Mirror? I could have easily added
26:23
a number 2 or Gash audio or anything else to the URL when I rejoined Podcast Mirror
26:30
and it would have been fine. You wouldn't have cared. I could have easily updated my
26:35
text expander snippets and anything that I still had linking to the old Podcast Mirror
26:40
feed I could have easily changed that over or would have just followed the redirect over
26:45
to the correct place, but that's not what I did.
26:48
So the moral of this long story is that if you ever think you should redirect back to
26:53
something that was already 301 permanently redirecting, don't.
26:59
Instead, make a new URL as your final destination.
27:03
And this problem is limited to 301 permanent redirects.
27:07
If all of these redirects were 307 redirects, that wouldn't be a problem because those
27:11
don't get cached. They get checked for where they should go every single time they're loaded, or at
27:17
they're supposed to be. That's the assumption with them and the assumption with 301 is that it's
27:21
checked once and then updated for future redirects. So these six cautions for using redirects are
27:30
caution number one. 301 redirects are permanent and cached. Number two, your redirect destinations
27:37
might change or disappear. Number three, most redirects bypass content. Number four, you might
27:45
someday rename your redirect. Number five, correcting URLs you said in old episodes is
27:51
practically impossible. And number six, reusing things you redirected from is a bad idea.
27:58
Especially if there were 301 permanent redirects. I've got some quick resources for you for making
28:04
redirects in case you're wondering what you should do, how you should make these in the future.
28:08
You can go back to my previous episode about redirects. I've got that link in the notes.
28:12
But here's a quick overview of that and some other stuff.
28:16
First, 301 permanent vs. 307 or 302 temporary.
28:20
With these cautions I shared in mind, my general advice is to choose 307 or 302 temporary redirects
28:27
for any destination you don't control.
28:30
Start with your affiliate links, your donation or membership page, your online community
28:34
and such. And for any destination you do control or you are absolutely certain will not change
28:41
in the foreseeable future, you can use a 301 permanent redirect if you want.
28:46
But you might even then still want a 307, unless you know, I always want it, because
28:51
there's also an SEO benefit to 301 redirects that any kind of SEO benefit that redirect
28:56
URL would get would be passed on to the final destination.
29:00
Second resource, WordPress plugins for making redirects.
29:03
If you are looking to make redirects on WordPress, as I do with my own site which is powered
29:07
by WordPress. My favorite plugins for this are PrettyLinks Pro and Redirection. And I
29:12
actually use both of them together. PrettyLinks Pro, which is a paid plugin and I really like
29:19
it, it's one of my all-time favorite plugins for WordPress, is much easier to use and has
29:24
a lot of helpful features like automatic keyword linking. Like even in the notes for this episode
29:29
where I say PrettyLinks Pro, that is automatically linked with my affiliate link that I didn't
29:34
have to add thanks to Printing Link Pro. It also supports a shorter link creation workflow
29:39
for pages and posts. It offers smart redirects and more. The Redirection plugin, on the other
29:46
hand, is free and it's more advanced, even allowing for regular expressions in your redirects.
29:52
And maybe the handiest feature here with Redirection is that you can enable it to monitor your
29:58
pages and posts to redirect any of those URLs you change to wherever they're supposed to
30:04
go. For example, many of my old episode web pages still include the TAP three-digit number code I
30:11
used to use in my titles. I've removed those from I believe all of my titles now, but I didn't change
30:18
those URLs. So if I did go back and change those URLs, when I have the redirection plugin enabled
30:24
to monitor those URLs for changes, it would then automatically redirect that web page's old URL
30:31
to the new one. I wouldn't have to worry about, "Oh no, I changed the URL for this page. I better
30:37
go back and redirect it." Redirection plugin just takes care of that for me. It's not so easy for
30:42
making those friendly links that you might speak in your podcast, but it is great for some of these
30:47
more advanced things. I have links to both of those in the notes for this episode at theaudacitytopodcast.com/redirectcautions.
30:55
And third resource would be other ways to make redirects. If you're not using WordPress or you
31:01
want to manage your redirects away from WordPress, then look at your domain or website tools and what
31:08
they offer. Or you could consider Cloudflare's options. Some podcast hosting providers or easier
31:14
website builders such as Padpage even offer their own redirect options you can create and manage
31:20
within your dashboard. This would work from only the domain you set to work with that
31:26
website, just like if you were working with WordPress after all.
31:28
The options from your domain registrar, your hosting provider, or Cloudflare generally
31:32
all work before loading anything from your website or server. So the redirects might
31:39
continue to function even if your website is down. And these can work without any website
31:46
at all. I have a domain that I've frequently spoken at podcast conferences for some quick
31:53
notes and things. It's a shorter domain but it's branded to me and there is no actual website at
31:59
that domain. It redirects to my website but there is no website on it. It's simply there for me to
32:06
easily speak a URL at a conference. Lastly, there are plenty of third-party URL shorteners and
32:13
redirect tools you can use, but some might charge if you want to customize the URL or use your own
32:18
domain or they're case sensitive. And even if you can use your own domain, it usually has to be a
32:24
subdomain or a completely different domain from your normal website. You can't have bit.ly pro
32:31
running on your normal website domain. It would have to be a subdomain or a completely different
32:37
domain altogether. And subdomains are basically different domains anyway. They can even point to
32:42
a completely different server instead of pointing to whatever server hosts your normal website.
32:49
Please visit the notes for this episode to review any of the information that I've shared
32:53
and share this episode out. It's at theaudacitytopodcast.com/redirectcautions or you can get to that a simple tap or swipe
33:01
away inside of your podcast app.
33:04
Let's take a brief visit to the community corner. Thanks for the 7,777 sat booster gram
33:10
from Steve Webb on my episode, the previous one, 11 Tips for Sharing URLs in Your Podcast.
33:16
And Steve said, "Another great episode with useful, actionable content."
33:20
Thanks Daniel! Also, a 1000 sat boostergram from Andy Lehman on the same episode and he said, "I tried
33:26
clicking on your links for this episode."
33:28
Remember how I mentioned the whole thing that I was doing with linking specific chapters
33:33
to specific sections of the notes?
33:36
what he was trying to click on and he said it crashed Castamatic. I wonder if it has
33:41
to do with those anchors. And yes it might. So that might be a test. A nice test for any
33:46
podcasting 2.0 app developers is check that episode, 11 tips for sharing URLs in your
33:51
podcast to see what happens if you tap on the links from those chapters. Anything after
33:58
chapter 1 then links to a specific section of my notes. So thank you for those booster
34:03
Also, thanks for the streaming satoshis from Dave Jackson, Brian Inskmeiner, and Dwev,
34:09
also known as Guy Martin now.
34:12
Thank you so much. I really appreciate that support.
34:14
And if you're on a Podcasting 2.0 app and you found that The Audacity to Podcast gives
34:18
you some value in your podcasting, please consider hitting that boost button and picking
34:23
a number that means something to you or that you think this podcast is worth to you.
34:28
Or if you're not using a Podcasting 2.0 app, you could go to theaudacitytopodcast.com/support
34:34
to send a gift through PayPal if you felt this podcast has been valuable to you.
34:39
But the biggest thing that you can do to help is really share this episode out.
34:43
And speaking of sharing episodes, thanks to Andy Lehman for having me on his podcast,
34:48
Podcast Answers, where we talked about podgagement.
34:51
Have you tried podgagement yourself yet? Try it out at podgagement.com.
34:55
Now that I've given you some of the guts and taught you some of the tools, it's time
34:59
for you to go start and grow your own podcast for passion and profit.
35:04
I'm Daniel J. Lewis from Theaudacitytopodcast.com.
35:08
Thanks for listening.
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