Redirects still broken in the Facebook and Instagram apps. It is 2023... Has anyone found a work around for this or are we still waiting for BB to fix it? BBNC handled redirects without any issues. Blackbaud, can you at least explain to us why redirects are so difficult in Blackbaud School Website?

This needs to be done. We are including shortened redirects on posters and printed material but then have to share a completely different link on social media. This is affecting our marketing ads and tracking because we are having to create a bit.ly

I also would like to put in the request for the redirect servers to ignore all query strings, not just those that Facebook adds.

While I don't know how your redirect service works, most webservers that handle requests like that can easily rewrite the URL and the configuration settings to do so is not difficult.

Please escalate this issue. We need redirects. This is bad for business and makes blackbaud and our schools look unprofessional and behind the curve when people click on broken links. 

This does seem like a super basic function. The full URL is very inelegant and unprofessional looking, which is one of the reasons why we do the custom redirect URL. Another reason is ideally so that people can pass on the info to others, because they are much more likely to remembers www.school.org/arts than https://school.myschoolapp.com/podium/default.aspx?t=36644&rid=29414, you know what I mean? This is especially important for event registration.

I'm so surprised that this hasn't been fixed yet, and the response here was disappointing to me as a customer. So many schools use facebook. I agree with David 1000%.

In general, updating the redirect code is a pretty major lift for us.  We have thrown around the idea of using a landing page that would not be part of the second level navigation and a copy of your apply page could be created to get a shorter URL.  

We are also releasing an update next week that will remove the /page from URLs so that hopefully will help in creating a much shorter and more user friendly address.
https://k12hub.blackbaud.com/blog/addition-by-subtraction-with-school-website-url-enhancement

We will continue to monitor this request here and see what other feedback we can gather.  

We often include custom URL redirects within the text of a blurb. the most recent example was a job post on Facebook where we encouraged applicants to learn more about our arts program by visiting www.trinityes.org/arts. The ultimate "link" in the Facebook page was to the job posting itself, but this URL appeared highlighted within the text of the post. The result is that a reader may be encountering our school for the very first time, and they are directed to a broken link. This is bad for business.

Another example is that we like to use the custom URL trinityes.org/apply in all of our admissions ads on Facebook. They are simple and clean. Isn't that the point of a custom URL redirect? If they won't work from the largest social media platform in the world, then what is the point of having them at all?

Hello David,

We have seen this come thru for other applications and it is a result of the returning service appending the URL.  Our redirect service doesn't consider that a match since the URL is not an exact match.  

The full URL should still work here and get your the end result you are looking for.  

I would be interesting in hearing more about the need for using custom URLs for a function like this because there could be something we haven't considered.