Archiving Links vs. Deleting Links

If a link only needs to be active for a short period of time, BL.INK offers two options for how to automatically expire the links.


Users may set an automatic link archive date or an automatic link delete date when the link is created or they may edit an existing link to set an expiration date. 


NOTE:

The automatic archive/delete date option is only available on the SMB plan or higher.


Archiving Links

Archiving a link will automatically unpublish the link and preserve any click data within the BL.INK analytics. Click data will remain available as long as the link exists in the BL.INK dashboard and has not been permanently deleted.


Any traffic to the link after the link has been archived will redirect to the home page, which is set under Admin > Root pages. For more information on setting a home page, check out this article.


To set an automatic archive date, follow the steps to create a new link or to edit an existing link. On the right-hand side, find the dropdown for Archive and click the calendar icon to set a date for the link to be archived. Then click Save to save a new link, or Update to save changes to an existing link.




Users may also set an automatic archive date when creating links via import or API.


To set an automatic archive date in the import file, use Column E to set the date using the format YYYY-MM-DD. Click here to read more about importing links.


To set an archive date when creating or editing links in the API, use the archive_on request to set the archival date. For more information on the BL.INK API, check out our developer documentation.


Deleting Links

Deleting a link from BL.INK will permanently delete the link and any associated click data from the dashboard. This cannot be reversed -- please proceed with caution when setting a link for automatic deletion.


After a link has been deleted, visitors that click the link will see a 404 page. By default, we'll show a BL.INK 404 page, but users may customize this under Admin > Root pages. For more information about setting a custom 404 page, check out this article.


To set an automatic delete date, follow the steps to create a new link or to edit an existing link. On the right-hand side, find the dropdown for Archive, click the arrow, and select Delete. Then click the calendar icon to set a date for the link to be automatically deleted.




Click Save to save a new link, or Update to save changes to an existing link.


Users may also set an automatic delete date when creating links via import or API.


To set an automatic delete date in the import file, use Column D to set the date using the format YYYY-MM-DD. Click here to read more about importing links.


To set a delete date when creating or editing links in the API, use the delete_on request to set the delete date. For more information on the BL.INK API, check out our developer documentation.


For any other questions on deleting or archiving links, please submit a ticket


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