Lack of interest Short url generator

[Jim Boy]

Was looking at the sharing options for posts, well that's nice, but half a post to twitter can be taken up by the url of the item - especially when using SEO optimisation. So I thought why not use owl.ly tinyuyrl or whatever service. And while that would be great, it comes at a price, namely that you create a dependence on a third party, which is always bad, and it is fiddly, setting up accounts etc. Then I thought why not have Xenforo have it's own internal short-code generator.

For example if you set up a forum so that anything in the u directory is a shortcode, eg instead of:

http://www.myforum.com/threads/calz...od9604-declared-‘safe’.1071525/#post-34290035

I would use the URL http://www.myforum.com/u/lzf43q

I simple lookup of the short code would produce the url and the visitor be directed to the right location.

Using 6 characters made up of a-z & 0-9 gives over 2 billion combinations, plenty for even the biggest of sites.

While I think the above would be great, another possibly simpler trick would be to drop the seo cmpoenent out of the genrated url. The urls:
http://www.myforum.com/threads/calz...od9604-declared-‘safe’.1071525/#post-34290035
and
http://www.myforum.com/threads/1071525/#post-34290035
take the user to the same location. And what's worse the seo component of the url, which is based upon the thread title, is repeated in the form of the thread title.

This improvement is really aimed at breaking down the hindrances that forum owners experience in getting their forums advertised in other social media.

 

[AndyB]

While I think the above would be great, another possibly simpler trick would be to drop the seo cmpoenent out of the genrated url.

This is already a feature of XenForo:

Admin CP -> Options -> Search Engine Optimization (SEO) -> Include Content Title in URLs

Make sure the Include Content Title in URLs is unchecked. This is how I run my forum.

 

[Jim Boy]

This is already a feature of XenForo:

Admin CP -> Options -> Search Engine Optimization (SEO) -> Include Content Title in URLs

Make sure the Include Content Title in URLs is unchecked. This is how I run my forum.

Thanks but I dont want to turn off SEO - I just want short urls in my twitter links

 

[Martok]

Twitter already shortens the links you put in, there's no need to shorten them first. In its character count for a tweet, it counts the characters of the shortened link it will provide (even before it does it), it doesn't count the characters of the full URL that you paste into your tweet.

 

[Jim Boy]

Twitter already shortens the links you put in

Twitter does, but there are far more systems out there than Twitter. And others are also doing this. Google maps, for example, now provide a shortened url when you generate a link.

 

[Martok]

Thanks but I dont want to turn off SEO - I just want short urls in my twitter links

Twitter does, but there are far more systems out there than Twitter. And others are also doing this. Google maps, for example, now provide a shortened url when you generate a link.

You said you wanted it for Twitter, not for anything else. It's understandable for Twitter due to the character limit, though not necessary as they do the shortening for you. What other reason would you need short URLs for?

 

[Jim Boy]

. What other reason would you need short URLs for?

Sharing - whether it be on twitter, kick, FB, SMS, email etc. Being short they are easy to scribble down or even remember. Being short they dont look anywhere near as ugly. Being short they aren't quite so prone to being chopped and the link broken.

I'm talking about making Xenforo a better product, not a merely adequate one.

 

[Jim Boy]

Looks good - now if I can get that into the auto gen stuff