Considerations for events with custom redirects

There is an option on events to create a "custom redirect," which allows you to redirect any visitors to the page on this site to a different URL of your own choosing. This feature is mostly useful for departments that have strong web branding and in-house web development, and wish to run and control their own entire event website.

Custom landing pages and signup forms

You can enable both a custom landing page and signup forms on this site, however that will make it impossible for users to find your signup forms on their own because the page that normally links to them will now redirect them to your custom landing page. If you would like to use your own landing page and one or more of our RSVP forms, you will need to do the following:

• Visit your event's public page.
• You should not be redirected if you are logged in, but will instead be shown some notifications explaining that this URL would normally redirect to your page.
• Link to the URLs in the blue RSVP links on this page from your own landing page or email invitations to students, so that they can find them.

Custom landing pages and body content

Any body content you enter into an event that has a custom redirect will not be visible to normal users. Your departmental contact information will also not be visible through the routes most users follow to your page. Make sure all the information visitors need about your event is available on your custom page.

Custom landing pages and regalia

If you would like to rent regalia and use a custom redirect, please have a plan for collecting either RSVPs or regalia rental requests from your faculty and communicate clearly with your faculty how they should RSVP and/or request regalia for your event. If faculty from your department RSVP only for the main commencement as a way of ordering regalia and then do not attend our event, we will bill their regalia rentals to you.

If you want to collect regalia orders yourself, but still order regalia through this site (and potentially take advantage of the cost-sharing features that enables), you may want to read the "Entering your own regalia orders" section of the regalia rental instructions.

Prefer unique URLs

Because our site will continue to list past events for a long time after they occur, it is preferable for archival reasons (but not required) to have some sort of unique URL for each semester's event. If possible, use a custom landing page URL that is specific to that semester's event, and will not change later.

For example, if possible, place your landing page at a URL like https://yourdepartment.unm.edu/convocation-fall-2022/ and leave that page up as long as is reasonable, rather than linking to something like https://yourdepartment.unm.edu/convocation/ and reusing that same URL every semester.

If you are going to reuse a landing page URL, it is considered best practice to edit your past events and remove the custom URL redirect so that they display in a way that will be less confusing to users (i.e. users clicking the link to a past convocation, and getting a page about the current semester).

Do not redirect to your departmental home page

Simply entering in your departmental home page will not be helpful for visitors, and will most likely cause a large amount of confusion among your students and faculty. You should create a page on your departmental website specifically for your event, and link directly there.

Redirecting directly to forms is discouraged

Unless the landing page of a form (Formstack, Opinio, O365, etc) contains a good amount of information for visitors, redirecting directly to forms using this feature is discouraged. This is especially so if that form is intended only for faculty or only for students. If you are considering redirecting directly to a form, either ensure that the form itself contains all pertinent information, or put that information in your event's body content and add a link to the body content.

Link-checking

To ensure we aren't sending our users to broken links, this site will periodically check if custom redirect URLs are valid. If the URL you entered does not return a valid HTTP response the redirect will be automatically disabled until the URL is online again. This will make any body content for the event visible, so it can be useful to keep some body content entered as a fallback, even if you are using a custom redirect.