This post was published 1 year 5 months 7 days ago. Therefore, it may well be out of date. Do not reply on the contents of this post being accurate. Long URLs don’t play nicely if you’re character-limited, e.g. when posting to twitter, or maybe, including a link in an email or when leaving a comment on a blog or forum. Therefore, the use of URL shortening services, which, for example, can turn http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=TinyURL&diff=283621022&oldid=283308287into http://tinyurl.com/mmw6lb are very useful.
So, I decided to set-up and host my own URL shortening service. Why? Well, why not, actually. Just a little project to see if I can.
Anyway, LifeHacker has a short tutorial on how to install Yourls so, I registered a short domain to use – I registered http://aURL.co – followed the instructions and, hey presto, here’s my first short URL …
http://jamesbliss.com/blog/url-shortening
is now shortened to
http://aurl.co/1
From now on I’ll be using my own shortened URLs in Twitter etc. Currently, my service is private use only (unlike public versions). I may open it up to friends and family if anyone wants.
Also, I haven’t yet configured a web front-end, so, if you go to http://aURL.co it’ll currently display a 403 error.