Building a Custom Drupal Shortlink Manager: An SEO and Marketing Journey
August 13, 2025Drupal Odyssey is supported by it's readers. When you purchase products or services using the links on this site, we may earn a small commission at no additional cost to you. Learn more
Have you ever found yourself needing to share a long, clunky URL but wanted something short, sweet, and most importantly, trackable – especially for social media? I certainly did.
Every time I wrote a new blog post, I'd create a memorable, SEO-friendly URL that was, by its very nature, long. Then came the tedious part: opening a spreadsheet and manually manipulating the URL to include my Google Analytics (GA) UTM parameters for each social network. It was boring, slow, and a pain in the neck. I knew there had to be a better way.
The existing solutions were either too complex, too rigid, or simply didn't integrate well with my Drupal site. I needed a way to create a clean, short link for marketing campaigns or social media posts that was consistent, quick, and, most importantly, could replace my tedious spreadsheet entirely. This need led me to build a custom shortlink manager in Drupal.
Instead of trying to force a square peg into a round hole, I saw a chance to create something better. This post is the first chapter in that story—my journey to build a custom shortlink manager from the ground up, tailored specifically for my needs.
The Problem with Clunky URLs
Let's be honest, long URLs are a PITA. They look messy on printed materials, they're difficult to remember, and they offer no insight into their performance. While services like bit.ly are great, they often live outside your core application. I wanted a solution that was native to Drupal, giving me complete control over my data and branding. In short, I wanted to transform a link like this:
https://example.com/blog/category-name/the-awesome-new-post?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=launch
...into something clean and simple, like this:
https://example.com/go/sui49_nm
But more than just shortening the link, I wanted to track who was clicking it, where they were coming from, and which campaigns were most effective. This wasn't just a convenience; it was a critical business need. It became clear that creating a dedicated Drupal shortlink module was the answer.
The Blueprint: My Initial Requirements
To tackle this, I brainstormed a list of core requirements. This was my project blueprint, guiding every decision I made:
A Dedicated Shortlink Entity: I needed a new, specific content type to store all the information related to a single shortlink—its destination URL, its short path, and any tracking data. This would be the core of our Drupal link manager.
Repeatable GA Campaigns: I didn’t want to manually enter UTM parameters for every new shortlink. I needed a way to create a "template" and assign it to content to build the tracking on the fly. This was the key to replacing my spreadsheet.
Seamless Redirection: The system had to effortlessly redirect users from the short path (/go/alsu9-m77t) to the correct final URL, complete with all the necessary tracking parameters for GA.
Contextual Shortlink Display: I wanted a simple way for editors (okay, me, myself, and I) to see and use a shortlink while setting up my social shares or just working on a page. A block that would display the related shortlinks right on the node page was the perfect solution.
Laying the Foundation
With this blueprint in hand, I made some key technical decisions to get started. I decided to build the module around a Content Entity – a powerful feature in Drupal that provides a robust and flexible way to store my shortlink data. For the redirection, I planned to use a Controller to handle the requests to our short paths, ensuring a fast and efficient redirect every time. This was my approach to creating a custom shortener from scratch.
This first step gave me a solid foundation. The core idea and basic plan were in my head, and I could finally see how this could actually work.
What's Next?
This initial phase was all about setting the stage and defining the problem. The next big challenge was figuring out how to make my links truly useful with robust tracking. In the next post, we’ll dive into a key part of my requirements: creating UTM Sets to make my links not just shorter, but smarter.
Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss the next chapter of this journey, where we turn a simple idea into a powerful marketing tool.
0 Comments
Login or Register to post comments.