Create a URL Shortener for sharing forum related links

Howdy!

I’ve come across a few related ideas in the past, so I can understand if this one might get merged, but I think I can make this unique enough to be able to stand by itself. I kinda pinched the parts of the concept from TypeForm, Jitsi, Twitch and a bunch of existing URL Shorteners, but I think it can work with inSided.

For security and anti-abuse reasons, this would of course only be for internal forum links (and not a generic one for anything that goes off platform!), and only for making links easier to share.

But the idea I’ve had is to basically have a brand new domain that can be used to redirect in the way that a URL Shortener does, but with various subdomains on a 1:1 basis so that each inSided customer is assigned a subdomain on it just like with the main platform. And from here, have the slug after the / be something memorable like three words (because words are easier to remember than numbers!).

And from there, if these short links basically redirected to the original entity using the numeric ID, it should hopefully not break them if content gets moved around (since the redirect goes off the ID number, not the slug). As an example, the Introduce Yourself thread on here could be something like:

https://inspired.example.com/DanielOvertookJulian

You could even throw in some Easter Eggs into the links if you wanted to. As long as you had a way to filter out “unfriendly” combinations from ever being used - which I think is already possible to do - then you could have something like three billion possible combinations, so there’d be truckloads of threads that could have these links before you’d ever have to start worrying about running out. And you could always just throw another word on if you absolutely had to (or start another subdomain!).

I’ve actually come across a domain that would probably do the job very nicely as well. It’s never been registered before and is completely untouched, so I don’t want to mention it here in case someone decides to hijack it before inSided gets in. I’d be happy to mention it privately though.