TIL: Vanity URLs & the Pardot Recycle Bin

The TIL (Today I Learned) series are short posts about nice tips & tricks that solve little, everyday frustrations – or something remarkable that I have to share.

Today I found I couldn’t reuse a URL for a landing page because the URL already exists. But that’s not possible, all landing pages have been cleared from the account. And then, I realised why.

Note: before we continue, this is applicable for accounts with CNAME set-up, meaning you are able to define your own vanity URLs. There’s a handy intro to the topic if you need it.

I’ve created a landing page with a vanity URL of:
www2.xxx.com/vanity-test

I’ve decided that I don’t want this landing page anymore, and just like burnt toast, it’s probably better to chuck it and start from scratch. So, I delete the landing page.

Note: with a few exceptions, pressing delete in Pardot doesn’t actually delete assets, but sends them to the ‘Recycle Bin’ where they will be available for undeleting forevermore. Great in 99.99% of cases, but not this one.

When I create a new landing page and want to have the same URL – it throws an error:
“This vanity URL is already being used here. Please enter a unique value.”

How annoying.

To rectify this, in a new window, head to the Recycle Bin.

Scroll down the alphabetical list to landing pages, and click to get to the ‘LandingPages: Recycle Bin’ table. Click on the cog next to your landing pages, and ‘Undelete’.

With your restored landing page, edit and change the Vanity URL to any nonsense (or you can just leave blank for an auto-generated URL string), and then delete again.

If you still have the landing page builder open in the other window, you’ll be able to process to the next stage of creation, and eventually save successfully.

I guess all that’s left to say is yes, it’s annoying, but it’s for the greater good – in case you ever want to undelete a landing page (because it’s impossible to have duplicate URLs in use).

The TIL (Today I Learned) series are short posts about nice tips & tricks that solve little, everyday frustrations – or something remarkable that I have to share.