Sometimes you might have visited some URLs which look very short but when you click on them, they expand to almost 255 characters which is enough to fill your address bar.
These short looking URLs are given by URL Shortening services. Some popular URL services are TinyURL.com, Bit.ly, Adf.ly etc.
These are very helpful in transferring very long URLs like this long URL :
http://www.amazon.com/Kindle-Wireless-Reading-Display-Globa lly/dp/B003FSUDM4/ref=amb_link_353259562_2?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIK X0DER&pf_rd_s=center-10&pf_rd_r=11EYKTN682A79T370AM3&pf_rd_ t=201&pf_rd_p=1270985982&pf_rd_i=B002Y27P3M
to :
http://tinyurl.com/KindleWireless
using TinyURL service.
![Compress long URLs to shorter ones ! Compress long URLs to shorter ones !](jpg/hecka-big-icona03f.jpg)
These are also very helpful to send someone link of your social profiles. But, these services have very strong business model so, if you ever shut down the store then all your earlier shortened URLs will be broken.
So, here is a very simple trick by which you can set up URL shortening service with your own domain. They will remain permanent as long as your website is running, these are free of cost and also you can add any name after your URL Shortener service which might be not available at these popular services like http://tinyurl.com/1 is hired.
Which Type of URL Shortening You will Get?
You can set any easy to remember sub-domain to set up your URL Shortener and then you can use your custom characters to set up URL Shortener. The short URLs I made using TechGYD.COM are :
![my shortlinks](png/my-shortlinksa5d8.png)
- http://go.techgyd.com/facebook (Link To My Facebook Fan Page)
- http://go.techgyd.com/twitter (Link To My Twitter Profile)
- http://go.techgyd.com/youtube (Link To My YouTube Channels)
- http://go.techgyd.com/linkedin (Link To My LinkedIn Profile)
- http://go.techgyd.com/gplus (Link To My Google+ Business Page)
These URLs are friendly as well as easy to remember. Also, if people remember these URLs then they will also remember my Website’s name so I can easily make permanent visitors to my website.
How To Setup URL Shortener using Your Domain ?
Setup URL Shortener service needs some very easy steps. Just follow these given step and you can set URL shortened for any internal as well as external links.
Step 1 : You first need to set up a domain from which you want to create short URLs.
- Log-in to your cPanel server.
- Now go to “domains”, find option of creating sub-domain.
- Create a friendly looking sub-domain like I hired “go”.
You can set the location as GO folder in public_html (root folder). However, we don’t need this.
Step 2 : Create Required Redirections
Exit the sub-domains and go to “redirects“. Now select the sub-domain http://go.yourdomain.com and set redirection to your needed URL.
Set a 302 (Temporary Redirection) rather than 301(Permanent Redirection) because 301 redirection will share your website’s Google link juice.
That’s All you need to do . You can also set these custom URL redirections from your primary domain but I just did that way to make it easily understandable for visitors.
Things you will miss!
The URL Shortener service which you just set is a very efficient way to invite a friend to your social profile. These are permanent and you can manually change them anytime directly going to your cPanel but you will miss a few things:
- You can’t track your stats related to these URLs like clicks, geographical stats etc.
- You can’t set you affiliate links here, the way you do in Bit.ly or Adf.ly type services.
But I don’t think this will actually matter if you are setting it for your social profiles or more important, secure links.