Short addresses for your files

A file in your media library has a long, machine-made address: https://cdn.clickwhale.com/1/media/restaurant_menu_winter_v2.pdf. Link files gives it a short one on your own domain instead: yoursite.com/menu. When the file changes, you point the short address at the new one and every printed flyer, QR code and old email still works.

The address is yours; the file behind it is swappable. Hand out /menu once, then change which PDF it serves whenever you like. The address never has to change again.

Making one

Add link to file, top right. Four fields:

Save, and the address works within a minute. No publish is needed: the live site reads this screen, like URL redirects, from your saved settings and holds it for at most a minute.

You can also start from the Media library: click a file and choose Create direct link. The same dialog opens with the file's address already filled in.

The address is cleaned up as you type

Leave the URL on website field and ClickWhale tidies what you typed: lower case, spaces become hyphens, accented letters lose their accents, and anything that isn't a letter, digit, hyphen, underscore or slash is removed.

That includes the dot, so you can't keep the file extension. Typing menu.pdf gives you menupdf. Use menu. The file still downloads as a PDF, because ClickWhale sends the real file type along with it. The address just doesn't say so.

Slashes survive, so downloads/pricelist works and gives you a tidy yoursite.com/downloads/pricelist.

One address per language

On a multi-language website the short address lives under the language prefix, so the list shows it as nl/winter-menu, and a visitor opens yoursite.com/nl/winter-menu.

A file address only answers in its own language. If you want the same PDF reachable in both, make two entries pointing at the same file, one per language. On a single-language site there's only one choice, so it doesn't come up.

Login required

Switch it on and the file is only served to a visitor who is logged in as a member. Anyone else gets your "not logged in" page.

This needs the Members module switched on and members set up. Without them there's nobody who can be logged in, and the file simply becomes unreachable. See Settings → Website settings for the module switch.

Changing the file later

Click the pencil on the row, paste the new file's address into File, save. The short address is unchanged, so everything pointing at it now gets the new document.

Uploading a new file over an old one keeps showing the old version to visitors; uploading under a new name and repointing the short address doesn't. See Uploading and managing your files.

Linking to something other than a file

The File field takes any address, not just one from your media library. Point a short address at a form on another service, at a booking system, at a document in someone else's cloud, anything with a URL.

Two things to know if you do:

• ClickWhale fetches it and serves it from your domain. The visitor never sees where it really came from and their address bar stays on your site. That's neat for a PDF and wrong for a web app. A page fetched this way arrives without its own scripts and styles working.
• The address has to be publicly reachable. Anything behind a login on the other end returns nothing.

Choosing a good address

• Short enough to say out loud. /menu beats /restaurant-menu-winter-2026, and it survives next winter.
• Don't date them. The date belongs in the file name, not in the address you printed.
• One per thing, not one per version. /pricelist forever, repointed twice a year.
• Don't collide with a page. A file address is checked before pages, so a short address that matches a page's address hides the page.

Common issues