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Short URL’s

Sat, August 8th 2009 at 03:49pm

After installing WordPress one of the first things I wanted to do was make a custom Short URL generator for the site. However after doing a quick search for plugins I found out two modules that will do what I need. The first creates short links for all the posts on the site, the second provides a directory of links to external sites. Both modules route all the links through a custom domain I bought.

So I actually got a custom “Tweet This!” link on every post with one line of code in my template, and one simple module called Short Post URLS. Basically all I did was bought a new domain name that was as short as I could get (http://cmln.us) and mapped it onto my main domain. Now I can link to any post with the following url (http://cmln.us/p/1) where 1 is the post id. All stats and views should be recorded just like regular links to the post.

For general short links to external sites I am trying Short URL Plugin by Harley. So far I like that it is simple and does the job. But I have not had much chance to play with it yet, so I will have to test it a little more before commenting on how it works. In general though it maps external links onto http://cmln.us/u/1 where 1 is a unique id to the external link. This mod also tracks how many click-throughs there have been.

Extending

There are still some things I would like to add, like a bookmarklet that allows me to quickly create short-links. Also maybe a way to automatically create short-links for every link I create. Also I need to get an auto Tweet or Ping.fm plugin and have the shorturl embedded into my post announcements.

Also I would like the short-links to my posts to be automatically replaced with the longer version onces the user is forwarded. Right now the short domain just replaces my main domain. I am thinking that in the end I might just use the external link generator to create and track links to all links I make and not just external.

Tags: codemonkeyx.net, Programming, Wordpress

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