Making Your Own URL Shortener

Making Your Own URL Shortener(blog.skywelch.io)

5 points by _gg50 9 years ago | 6 comments

smt88 9 years ago |

Don't use or create a URL shortener. They are only ever useful to spammers, they're a security risk, and they break the web[1].

1. https://t37.net/why-link-shorteners-harm-your-readers-and-de...

_gg50 9 years ago | |

I'm inclined to agree that the use of large URL shorteners obfuscates things too much and can contribute to spam.

However, this is a personal domain for my use only. And I don't think you can simply dismiss the usefulness of being able to track link usage and referrers without using nasty client-side JS stuff.

I'm also using "shortcodes" rather than random IDs for most stuff so the intent isn't lost.

takno 9 years ago | | |

The only thing that really bothers me personally about shorteners is not knowing where I'm going to end up, and not being able to identify articles I've read before. A shortener with a dedicated domain and user-chosen ids should cover that just fine. The only outstanding issue in the article is a single extra DNS lookup, which is pretty minor compared to the massive chains which were causing the problem.

smt88 9 years ago | | |

Using it yourself isn't the same as instructing other people how to do it.

Using it for a personal domain is likely going to hurt your SEO. You can track behavior on the server side without JS just as easily without short URLs.