thenextweb.com Open in urlscan Pro
2606:4700::6813:ad6f  Public Scan

Form analysis
0 forms found in the DOM

Text Content

NEWS

 * News
 * Events
   * TNW Conference 2022 June 16 & 17, 2022
 * Spaces
 * Programs

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 * Newsletters
 * Partner with us

 * 
 * 
 * 
 * 
 * 
 * 

 * Jobs
 * Contact

News news news news
 * Latest
 * Gadgets & apps
 * AI & futurism
 * EVs & mobility
 * Startups & growth
 * Crypto & fintech
 * Careers in tech
 * More
   * Future of Finance
   * Read Me





LATEST NEWS



This article was published on October 23, 2010




HOW TO: CREATE YOUR OWN URL SHORTENER



STORY BY

PAUL SAWERS



STORY BY

PAUL SAWERS

Paul Sawers was a reporter with The Next Web in various roles from May 2011 to
November 2014. Follow Paul on Twitter: @psawers or check h (show all) Paul
Sawers was a reporter with The Next Web in various roles from May 2011 to
November 2014. Follow Paul on Twitter: @psawers or check him out on Google+.

There’s been a flurry of news in the world of URL shortening of late. Google
finally released its Goo.gl to the public, and not long after vb.ly was pulled
for violating Islamic Sharia law. Not too many people will have been overly
bothered about that per se, but there was a little fear that the much loved –
and used – bit.ly would follow soon after. Such fears were soon allayed,
however.

URL shortening services have been helping social networkers and web-users for
almost a decade, the first notable publicly-available service being TinyURL,
launched in 2002.

Such services have proved especially useful on space-sensitive forums such as
Twitter, where users have a mere 140 characters to get their message across.
Twitter used TinyURL as its default shortener until 2009, when it switched to
bit.ly. And this year Twitter launched its very own t.co URL shortener, hosted
on a Colombian domain.

WHY STICK TO JUST 2 DAYS?

Check out the TNW Conference side events!

Join the events

There are hundreds of URL shorteners out there, they come and go, and not many
last the distance. A common reason given is the plethora of ‘dodgy’ websites
that use the services. One such site is tr.im – one of the best names for a URL
shortener out there, as it happens – hosted on the Isle of Man domain. It pulled
the plug on its web service because of such abuses, and the subsequent threats
from hosting providers who were being bombarded with links shortened using the
tr.im domain.

Given that so many URL shortening services come and go, this can lead to what’s
known as link-rot. Essentially, if an online URL shortening service goes bust,
you will lose all the web links you’ve shortened with that service.

One option is to use a service such as goo.gl – let’s face it, Google isn’t
going bust anytime soon. Alternatively, you can set-up your very own hosted URL
shortening service – to have full control over your URLs and peace of mind that
your links will remain online for a long time. Here are our two recommendations.


OPTION 1: THE FULLY HOSTED WAY

Setting up your own URL shortener is a three-step process.

1.    Register a (international) domain

The first step involves registering a domain name – to keep in with the trend of
many of these sites, it’s an idea to keep the URL as short as possible.
Ultimately, this means you’ll need to look to international domains, given that
the likes of .com, .net and .co.uk  domains are in short supply.

You can even get creative and think of a way of incorporating the domain
extension into the overall URL name, for example is.gd, goo.gl and su.pr. It’s
worth noting that some country code top-level domains (ccTLD) can cost a lot – a
.pr domain can cost about $1,000 USD to register per year, hence many good names
are still available in Puerto Rico.

At the time of writing, you can secure stub.by from Belarus for $145 USD per
year. Whereas tinie.st from São Tomé and Príncipe is yours for a mere $79 USD.

If it becomes possible to register domains in Eritrea, you’ll need to be quick
to secure the likes of small.er or less.er. And the same goes for the Catalonian
domain .cat – which is limited to local parties at present, meaning you can’t
secure trun.cat quite yet.

2.    Find a hosting service

As a general rule of thumb, if your web host can handle a WordPress blog, it’ll
cope with a server-based URL shortening web application such as YOURLS just
fine. The server should run PHP 4.3, MySQL 4.1 at the very least.

Another issue depends on whether you plan to make your service private or
public. If you plan to create the next bit.ly, you’ll need a lot of server space
to cope with the traffic – in fact, you’ll probably need a dedicated server.

However, if the service is purely for your own use or a few people in your
company, then you should be fine on a shared server, which is cheaper.

3.    Install your URL shortening webapp

There are other options, but YOURLS is about the best there is. It’s essentially
a small set of PHP scripts that you include on your site – and you can easily
make the service public or private. Furthermore, as with any good URL shortener,
you can customise your URLs and generate reports on all activity surrounding
your links.

And the beauty of all this, is it’s free to install. So you can create your very
own URL shortening service for peanuts – essentially, the cost of registering a
domain name and securing a hosting service.


OPTION 2: THE QUICK (BUT NOT FREE) WAY, CLOUDAPP.

A fully-hosted personal URL shortener may seem like a step too far when all you
want is the security and control of your links. Step forward CloudApp, which is
a slick desktop/web sharing tool for Mac users which incorporates a URL
shortening service. On the free version, users are limited to CloudApp’s own
cl.ly domain to shorten URLs (no real disaster there), but on its new premium
service announced last week (€4/month), you can now use your own domain name as
a link shortener.

But what about Windows users? Well, enter FluffyApp, a third party client
designed for Windows users which piggy-backs off CloudApp’s hardwiring. Given
that it’s a Windows wrapper developed by a high school student, there are a few
teething problems with the application and it can be classed as in its testing
phase, so you may experience some problems running this on Windows.

FluffyApp has not been fully tested with CloudApp Pro, so it’s unclear whether
you’ll yet be able to use your own domain as a URL shortener – though in theory
this service is good to go right now.


OPTION 3: THE OTHER QUICK (BUT NOT FREE) WAY, BIT.LY

Bit.ly offer a free Pro custom short domain service which unfortunately has yet
to open its doors to the public. Set up is as easy as CloudApp’s but with access
limited to “by request” for the last 8 months, there’s no telling when you’ll be
able to use it. You can apply here though.

There are plenty of options for those wishing to steer clear of the fly-by-night
URL shortening services. Link-rot? Fret not.

CloudApp (https://thenextweb.com/news/cloudapp-slickest-sharing-tool-mac-masses)
is a slick desktop/web sharing tool for Mac users which incorporates a URL
shortening service. On the free version, users are limited to CloudApp’s own
cl.ly domain to shorten URLs (no disaster there), but on its new premium service
announced
(http://www.downloadsquad.com/news/cloudapp-goes-freemium-offers-unlimited-uploads-for-a-few-dollars)
last week (€4/month), you can now use your own domain to generate short URLs.



And Droplr (http://droplr.com/) for the Mac has similar functionality too when
used in conjunction with IwantMyName.com. To set Droplr up as your personal URL
shortener, you simply arrange your new domain name, go to the ‘setup’ tab on the
IWantMyName.com dashboard and choose Droplr from the web application directory.
This is free, too.



This is great – but what about Windows users? Well, enter FluffyApp
(http://fluffyapp.com/), a third party application designed for Windows
(http://www.downloadsquad.com/news/fluffyapp-is-like-cloudapp-for-windows) users
which piggy-backs off CloudApp’s hardwiring.

Published October 23, 2010 - 11:08 am UTC
Back to top



POPULAR ON TNW TODAY

 1. 1
    
    CLEARVIEW AI CLEARS THE FINAL HURDLE IN ITS QUEST TO UNDERMINE US DEMOCRACY

 2. 2
    
    WATCH: THIS ELECTRIC MOTORCYCLE HAS ITS ENTIRE ‘HEART’ INSIDE ITS HUBLESS
    REAR WHEEL

 3. 3
    
    DAMN! SONOS’ NEWEST PRODUCTS SHOW JUST HOW SMART THE COMPANY IS

 4. 4
    
    4 WEBSITES TO HELP YOU CREATE A CLEAN, ATTRACTIVE RESUME

 5. 5
    
    ELON MUSK’S 7 MOST PREPOSTEROUS PREDICTIONS






RELATED ARTICLES

HARDFORK

CRYPTO CRASH EXPLAINER: THIS IS WHY YOU’RE LOSING MONEY

HOUSE OF TALENT

I LEFT MY DREAM JOB AT GOOGLE — AND I’M UNDOUBTEDLY HAPPIER


GET A HEAD START ON YOUR TNW EXPERIENCE

Join us at our exclusive pre-conference events!

Register for free

SPACE

REMEMBER THAT FIRST PICTURE OF A BLACK HOLE IN OUR GALAXY? WE TOOK IT

SHIFT

BIRD UNVEILS NEW AR TOOLS TO CURB ILLEGAL ESCOOTER PARKING

The heart of tech

 * 
 * 
 * 
 * 
 * 
 * 
 * 



MORE TNW

 * Media
 * Events
 * Programs
 * Spaces
 * Newsletters
 * Deals


ABOUT TNW

 * Partner with us
 * Jobs
 * Terms & Conditions
 * Cookie Statement
 * Privacy Statement
 * Editorial Policy
 * Masthead

Copyright © 2006—2022, The Next Web B.V. Made with <3 in Amsterdam.