Oops. Silly me. I misread your question. Correct again. Changing the URL after publication will break any and all links previously published or shared. Hope this helps.
Hey Mike, I also forgot to add this to my pre-publish checklist and went ahead and published a new article about 3 hours ago. Sadly, it's a lengthy title and the slug URL is terrible. I haven't shared it yet, not even in Notes. So is it truly too late to "fix" it? Or would it potentially keep a subscriber who reads it via email from liking or commenting (where the process returns to the website)? If so, then I'll just have to live with it. sigh...
Hi Sharon. If you've already published the post as a newsletter sent by email to your subscribers - then editing the original URL slug 'after the fact' will only break that link back to the post hosted on your publication. But it will not stop the original post being accessible in email by those subscribers who may open the email AFTER you edit the URL slug. The implications? If a reader of the emailed post attempts to engage with a like or comment then the attempt will fail due to the original URL slug being voided by virtue of the edit. Hope this makes sense. 🙂
Correct, Elizabeth. In so far as Substack goes when publishing your posts - the first parts of the URL before the .com (sub-domain and domain) cannot be changed with this process. Via a separate process in our account settings we can change the sub-domain of our Substack URL.
Oops. Silly me. I misread your question. Correct again. Changing the URL after publication will break any and all links previously published or shared. Hope this helps.
Hey Mike, I also forgot to add this to my pre-publish checklist and went ahead and published a new article about 3 hours ago. Sadly, it's a lengthy title and the slug URL is terrible. I haven't shared it yet, not even in Notes. So is it truly too late to "fix" it? Or would it potentially keep a subscriber who reads it via email from liking or commenting (where the process returns to the website)? If so, then I'll just have to live with it. sigh...
Hi Sharon. If you've already published the post as a newsletter sent by email to your subscribers - then editing the original URL slug 'after the fact' will only break that link back to the post hosted on your publication. But it will not stop the original post being accessible in email by those subscribers who may open the email AFTER you edit the URL slug. The implications? If a reader of the emailed post attempts to engage with a like or comment then the attempt will fail due to the original URL slug being voided by virtue of the edit. Hope this makes sense. 🙂
Thanks! I'm not going to change it and will chalk this up to experience. A missed opportunity, for sure. But I don't want to risk it. Thanks again!
Omg I had no idea you could edit the slug!! You are genius!
Sometimes I’m lazy and forget to do the image.
I have customized my URL before but not consistently so I’ll add it to my pre-publish checklist. Thanks for this very clear explanation.
I presume it is NOT wise to change a URL that has been published already, right?
Correct, Elizabeth. In so far as Substack goes when publishing your posts - the first parts of the URL before the .com (sub-domain and domain) cannot be changed with this process. Via a separate process in our account settings we can change the sub-domain of our Substack URL.