Tag Archives: twitter

Make your own short URLs with WordPress

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You might have noticed that I recently restored the main URL of my site to http://danielkoskinen.com . I decided it was a better idea to have my full name in the URL, and use my other domain (dani.fi) to generate my very own short URLs for use in Twitter & elsewhere.

There are many good URL shortening services around, like bit.ly, twu.rl and the WP-centric wp.me, and I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with those. However, if like me, you happen to have a nice short domain lying around that you’d like to use, why not make your own?

Install WordTwit

WordTwit is a plugin for WordPress by BraveNewCode for integrating your WordPress website with your Twitter account. I owe big thanks to Mikko Saari for telling me about it. The reason why I liked this specific plugin is it’s feature for creating short URLs using your own domain.

You can install WordTwit either directly from your WordPress admin (under Plugins > Add new) or by downloading the zip and uploading it to your server under wp-content/plugins/.

Redirect short domain to longer domain

There are different ways to do this. Because I’m running this site on a dedicated server, I created a new VHOST entry for the second domain (dani.fi) and inserted the following:

   
<VirtualHost *>
   ServerName dani.fi
   Redirect 301 / http://danielkoskinen.com/
</VirtualHost>

Replace dani.fi with your own short domain name and danielkoskinen.com with the main domain for your site. If you’re running on a shared web host, you can probably just create a redirect in CPanel or equivalent.

Configure WordTwit settings

Enable WordTwit, find it’s settings page and the section marked URL Shortening. Choose “Local” from the menu and save your settings. This will reload the page and reveal more options. You can now enter your short domain in the field marked “Use Alternate Domain”.

Save your settings, and you’re done!

Try it out

Go to edit any post, and you’ll find the short URL for the current post in the right sidebar, using your new nice-and-short domain name! There’s also a button to post a message to Twitter (which can be set up automatically for new posts with WordTwit).

Owning my content

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If Facebook goes bust, or perhaps more likely, ceases to interest me, how do I get all my content out? I’m mostly thinking about notes, photos and the like, but why not status updates too. Who’s to say real-time updates on my life don’t provide interesting reading in 10 years time? Or 20? Will they still be accessible then?

I’ve heard people say that real-time web updates are more like speech than written communication, hence archiving all those snippets is not important. There’s a big difference though, obviously — these written “soundbytes” are archived somewhere, just not on our own computers or in our diaries. Should we really be OK with Twitter and Facebook having total control over a significant part of our day-to-day communications about our lives? Would you be OK with your phone company announcing it could record all your phone conversations and do what it likes with them?

Anyway, it seems someone else has been thinking about the exact same thing, so do read this article if you feel like it: Who Owns Your Content? (by Chris Crum).

Feel free to leave a comment below, I’d like to hear other people’s opinions on this. Rest assured that you retain full ownership of your content! I reserve the right to delete any or all comments at a whim though! Or perhaps even start a lucrative T-shirt business with your blog comment on it.