How to re-use the URL of a deleted Story Map

[StephenBeste]

I had a Story Map at a particular Esri URL that was automatically assigned, say

    https:// <my account>.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapSeries/index.html?appid=01878934bbab4430a8409389e9244cc0. Fine

I foolishly deleted the Story Map on the ArcGIS Online My Contents page. Dumb!

Not finding any way to restore the deleted Story Map, I re-created it. Fine. The new Story Map, of course, has its own new URL:

    https:// <my account>.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapSeries/index.html?appid=90abfd6d1ff741c09ec446a559362b34. Fine.

The problem is that I have lots of folks who have links or bookmarks to the deleted Story Map's URL. Those links no longer work. They certainly don't go to my replacement Story Map.

1 --> Is there any way to recover the deleted Story Map?

2 --> If not, how can I move my new Story Map to the old URL at Esri so that my users' links will still work?

Thanks,

Steve

[JohnPlunkett]

I cant speak to how you can reuse the URL again (I suspect you are unable to) -

However for this Story Map I would look at this blog post and check the box for 'Delete Protection'

Protecting your ArcGIS Online items | ArcGIS Blog 

[StephenBeste]

John, that's excellent advice. I didn't know the "Delete Protection" feature existed. It might have saved me.

[OwenGeo]

Stephen -- Unfortunately, there's no way to reuse a URL one a story has been deleted.

Thanks, John, for mentioning delete protection. Enabling that for any important/high-profile story maps is a good practice. I'd also recommend enabling it for any map, scenes, and layers that appear in your public story maps so that the story components don't accidentally get deleted either.

[StephenBeste · Accepted solution]

After several back-and-forths with Esri tech support, the answer is still no. Specifically:

1. Can they restore my old story map? No.
2. Can they move my new story map to the old map's URL? No.
3. Can they redirect the old short URL to the new story map's URL? Yes, but they're not willing to, absent a persuasive business case (read, not for a small customer like me). I'm a software developer myself. I understand the calculation and don't fault them for it, even as I'm disappointed.

What I've learned out of this episode:

1. Turn on Delete Protection as John Plunkett and Owen Evans suggest.
2. The most valuable thing in the story map is not the story map itself but its URL, because the URL encapsulates all of the marketing you've done for your story map. The story map I can recreate; the marketing not so easily.
3. Therefore, host the story map on your own server if you can (I have no server). That will give you control over the URL.

Thank you, all.