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Short links

A printed QR whose destination you can change any time — the reprint-free promise, the fallback page, disabling, the cap, and downloading a print-grade QR.

A short link is a second kind of Smartlinks address, separate from a page. It’s a slug on links.maska.co.in whose destination you set — and can change — whenever you like. The slug is what gets printed; the destination is not.

Pages already give you one link that’s yours forever. Short links solve a different problem: something physical, printed once, that has to keep working after the thing it points to changes.

Why you’d want one

A page’s own link is permanent too, but it always opens that page. A short link opens whatever URL you’ve pointed it at right now — a product page that doesn’t exist yet, a seasonal offer, a partner’s site, another one of your own pages. Point four boxes at a placeholder today, and at four real product pages next month, without touching the boxes.

The reprint-free promise

Once a short link’s QR is printed, it never has to be reprinted. The slug that’s encoded in the code never changes. What changes is only where that slug currently sends people — and you can change it as often as you like, straight from the editor, with no new code to cut.

A scan always resolves live: there is no caching between an edit and the next person who scans the code.

Create one

You need the manage permission (the Admin or Manager role).

  1. Open the Short links section of the editor.
  2. Press New.
  3. Enter a slug — same rules as a page’s slug: lowercase letters, numbers and single hyphens. It’s checked against every slug Smartlinks has ever issued, to a page or a short link, so a taken one is rejected on the spot. A slug is permanent once you save — it cannot be renamed later.
  4. Optionally enter a destination — the URL the code should open. You can leave this blank and fill it in later.
  5. Pick a fallback page — one of your own Smartlinks pages. This is required even if you plan to set a destination straight away.
  6. Save.

The fallback page

Every short link points at a fallback page, not just a destination. If the destination is empty, a scan opens the fallback page instead. This is what lets you print a code before the real destination exists: point the fallback at a page you already have — your main Smartlinks page is a reasonable default — and fill in the real destination later without anyone seeing a dead link in the meantime.

You can re-pin the fallback page at any time, same as the destination.

If the destination is empty and the fallback page isn’t published, the short link shows a warning in the list — it has nowhere to send a scan. Fix either side to clear it: set a destination, or publish the fallback page.

Open it from the Short links list and edit the destination or the fallback page. Save. The next scan of the printed code lands on the new URL — nothing about the code itself changes.

Disable and enable

Disable takes a short link out of service without giving up the slug. Guests scanning a disabled code land on the same neutral page they’d see for any Smartlinks address that isn’t live. Because disabling never frees the slug, nobody else can ever claim it, and re-enabling brings the same code back to life pointed at whatever destination and fallback page it already had.

Disabling is a hold-to-confirm action, since a slug spent on a disabled link is spent for good. Enabling a disabled link is a plain action — it always counts against the cap the same as it did when it was first created, so turning it back on never checks the cap again.

The cap

Each tenant can hold a limited number of short links — 25 by default. The cap counts every short link you’ve ever created, including disabled ones, because a slug is never freed and never recycled.

If you’re near or at the cap, ask support to raise it for your tenant. This is a support-side change, not something you can do from the editor.

Each row in the Short links list offers:

  • Copy link — copies the full links.maska.co.in address to your clipboard.
  • QR — opens a dialog with a scannable code and two download options:
    • PNG — a standard image export, fine for on-screen use or a quick print.
    • SVG — a vector export with no fixed resolution. Give this to a printer or packaging vendor instead of the PNG; it stays sharp at any size, from a sticker to a shipping carton.

Short-link QRs are generated at a higher error-correction level than page QRs, since printed packaging takes more wear — scratches, folds, low-contrast printing — than a table tent or a poster.

What a customer sees

  • A working short link — the code redirects straight to the current destination, or to the fallback page if the destination is empty.
  • A disabled short link — the same neutral unavailable page any inactive Smartlinks address shows. Nothing about the code changes; it simply isn’t live right now.
  • An empty destination with an unpublished fallback page — the same unavailable page, because there’s nowhere for the scan to go. This is the state the warning in the list is telling you to fix.

Scans

The Short links list shows total scans and scans in the last 30 days for each link, counted the same privacy-safe way as page analytics — no IP addresses, no cookies, no fingerprinting. Short-link scans don’t appear inside the per-page Analytics tab; the counts on the list are the whole picture for now.

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