Redirecting with a Subdomain

Mostly we will create content on our own servers that live in subdomains. but they also are handy for creating an easy to remember shortcut link to content elsewhere on the web.

We can use a subdomain as a way to seamlessly send a site visitor to a link we have chosen, and it makes links look more associated with our own domain. Often we have important links to share, like a project Google Drive folder, where the links are rather… ugly. For example

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/3DzSJ_XP9zcxSKshtg3SHgMpbj63Zr-Ub?usp=sharing

when it might help users of our sites to have a more human, readable link like http://projects.gadgets.stateu.org/

Note: there are other ways to achieve this with link shortening services like bit.ly that you can assign custom domains, but a subdomain redirect is easy to set up and keep all communication in your domain. For your practice find an outside link that might be useful for your work that is just… not pretty. Or not customized enough.

Besides Google documents and folders, another use case might be a channel in YouTube. The Gadget site at StateU could use a redirect from the subdomain created in a previous kit for movies.gadgets.stateu.org to redirect to The Gadget Zone channel on YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxdIhjg5Dv3hMRCnYkz6-Ew

From our cpanel, under Domains, click Subdomains. Under Modify a Subdomain, find the one you created that should ac as a redirect, and click Manage Redirection. Enter the destination link where that subdomain should send visitors. This will now be reflected in your list of subdomains; one of ours is a redirect, the other is still empty (we will install a blog here soon!).