FAQ
If you have any questions about how SLINK works or comments about how it could be
improved, please contact Paul Seward
- How does SLINK work?
SLINK takes the web address that you enter and associates it with a shorter, randomly generated address. The short address will redirect browsers to its associated long address.
- How are the short addresses formed?
The short addresses are designed so that they are short enough to avoid line wrapping in emails and also easy enough to read out over the phone.
To make it easier to read an SLINK address out over the phone, SLINK also omits some characters which could cause confusion,
Eg B, V, S, F etc.
- Do SLINK addresses expire?
We aim to keep addresses shortened with SLINK for as long as possible.
- I don't like the Short URL, can I have another one?
In some cases, it may be possible for the University webmaster team to provide a more memorable link to your pages.
However, this service is not available for personal, Union Society or external pages. For more details contact
webmaster@bristol.ac.uk
and they will be able to advise you on an appropriate course of action.
- How Secure is SLINK?
SLINK addresses are randomly generated from a pool of over 70,000,000,000,000,000 possible addresses
which makes them pretty hard to guess. So the probability of anyone accidentally stumbling upon your
url is quite small, but it is not impossible.
For this reason we suggest that you don't use SLINK to link to confidential documents which are not otherwise protected in some way.
- Does SLINK work for external sites?
Yes, SLINK works for both internal and external sites and is accessible from outside the University.