Temporary links for giveaways and event promos
Forever links sound nice until someone finds last year's coupon in a forum thread.
A promo link that works forever sounds nice until someone digs up last year's fifty percent coupon in an old forum thread and hits checkout confused. Then you're answering DMs about a sale that ended in March while trying to frost cupcakes. True story from my inbox.
Expiry means the link lifetime matches the offer lifetime. Not stinginess. Just alignment.
Friend ran a 48-hour Telegram discount on candles — very specific, very chaotic weekend. Link should stop shortly after the window because the landing page switches back to full price and confused customers generate support mail you don't have staff for. Set expires_at when you create the link if you're logged in. After expiry visitors see a clear gone message instead of a broken checkout that makes your shop look abandoned.
Workshop on April 12, expire April 13. People who bookmarked understand the event passed. You don't manually disable fifty rows in a spreadsheet while drinking cold coffee.
"Replay available seven days" is marketing copy and a setting. Day eight the link stops. Cleaner than deleting the video and leaving a Vimeo 404 that makes you look sloppy.
Tell people the deadline in the post itself. "Works through Sunday." Saves inbox pain later. I still get "is this still on?" messages when I forget this step.
Some shorteners kill guest links in 24 hours by default to fight abuse. We didn't go that route. Guests get a stable quota. Registered users set expiry per link when they want a hard stop.
Reuse slugs later if the alias is free. April's spring sale can come back next April with a new destination. Same word, new year, less confusion than spring-sale-2025-final.
Small discipline. Less "is this still valid?" mail. More sleep.