Changing your Laces web address

Your web address is the short name at the end of your Laces link:

laces.run/fortportal

It is what you print on flyers, what you turn into a QR code, and what people type when someone tells them about your race. Changing it is not something to do casually, but on Laces it is also not the disaster it is on most platforms.

If you only take one thing from this guide, take this: your old links keep working. Laces sends anyone using an old address straight to your new one, permanently, and nobody else can ever take the address you gave up.

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1. What happens the moment you change it

Three things, all at once:

• Your new address goes live immediately.
• Your old address starts redirecting to the new one. Not a “page not found”: an actual permanent redirect, the kind search engines understand.
• Your old address is retired, not released. It is kept on your organization forever, and no other organizer can ever claim it.

That third point is the one people get wrong, because most platforms do the opposite. On many services, the moment you rename yourself, your old name goes back into the pool and a stranger can register it. Anyone still holding your old link then lands on somebody else’s page. That cannot happen here.

2. What keeps working

Item	What happens
Old links shared on WhatsApp	✓ Redirect to your new address
Printed flyers and posters	✓ Redirect to your new address
QR codes already in circulation	✓ Redirect to your new address
Links in someone’s Instagram bio	✓ Redirect to your new address
Your race pages	✓ Move with you
Entries already sold	✓ Untouched
Your money and statement	✓ Untouched

Nothing about your event data is tied to your web address. Runners, orders, kit, pickup points and payouts all belong to your organization, not to its name.

3. What you should still update

The redirect means nothing breaks. It does not mean there is nothing to do: a redirect is a safety net, not a substitute for the real address.

Worth updating when you get a chance:

1. Your social profiles. Instagram, Facebook, X: put the new address in your bio so new visitors see the real one.
2. Anything you are about to print. If a reprint is already scheduled, use the new address. Do not reprint purely because of this change.
3. Your own website, if you link to your Laces page from one.
4. Saved templates. If you paste the same WhatsApp message every year, update it.

What is not worth doing: throwing away flyers, reprinting menus, or regenerating QR codes that are already out in the world. They still work.

4. Why you can only change it once a week

After you change your web address, you have to wait 7 days before changing it again.

This exists to protect the people trying to find you. Every rename leaves a redirect behind, and an address that moves every other day turns into a chain of hops that is slow, confusing, and hard for search engines to follow. A week is long enough to make renaming deliberate, and short enough that a genuine mistake is not punished for long.

If you try to change it again too soon, Laces will tell you the exact date it becomes possible.

5. Choosing a good one

The rules, enforced as you type:

• 3 to 30 characters
• lowercase letters, numbers and hyphens
• no hyphen at the start or end, and no double hyphens
• not all numbers
• some names are reserved (admin, help, pay, and similar)

Beyond the rules, the useful test is whether someone can hear it and type it correctly. fortportalmarathon beats fpm-2026-official. Avoid a year unless the year is genuinely the point: an address with 2026 in it looks stale in January.

6. How to change it

1. Open the Organization tab in the Laces app
2. Tap Edit
3. Tap your web address
4. Type the new one; availability is checked as you type
5. Read the summary, then confirm

Only the organization’s owner can change it. Admins can edit the organization’s name, but not its address.

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Common questions

Will my old QR codes really keep working? Yes. They point at your old address, and that address now redirects to your new one. The visitor may notice the address bar change; that is all.

Can someone else take my old address? No. Retired addresses stay attached to your organization permanently.

Can I get my old address back? Yes, it is still yours. Changing back counts as a change, so the 7-day wait applies.

Does this affect my Google ranking? Short-term, mildly. Laces issues a permanent redirect, which is exactly what search engines want to see, and ranking transfers to the new address as they re-crawl. Updating your links elsewhere speeds that up.

Do my race addresses change too? Your races sit under your organization (laces.run/fortportal/marathon), so their full address changes with yours, and old race links redirect the same way.

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Changing your web address on Laces is safe, reversible, and does not break what you have already printed or shared. Choose the new one carefully, update your profiles when convenient, and let the redirect handle the rest.