Of course, even after yesterdays wonderful news about the crucial and game changing WP.me, the world could not go 24 hours without having another collective circle-jerk over more options on how to shorten a URL. Today, is do it yourself day. Let us presume that you use shortened URLs, however you do not trust some large greedy corporation, such as, pick one, StumbleUpon. You cannot, cannot, cannot use that service, so you decide to build your own shortener.
Good news, it’s easy.
Lifehacker has put together a drop dead simple overview on how to install the “Yourls” shortener onto your server, which you can then host as long as it fancies you (12 minutes), before you shut it down to save bandwidth. This would kill all of your links that were created before, but who cares, you own it.
Or if you are feeling extra lazy, as you should be, it is Monday after all, you can just let Google labs do all of the work for you. After all, one shortened URL is more or less as good as any other. Damn the liars, full FUD ahead. The Google option also is so quick to install and get working, that indeed you might be persuaded out of this space from the get go.
All of these services will shorten a URL for you. Remember when I said that one shortened URL is as good as the next? I was lying. Cli.gs and Bit.ly do much more than just shorten a link, they do analytics, etc. Your shortener will not.
Final point, let’s say you post a link on Twitter. Six months later the link breaks. Does anybody hear it? Probably not. This seems to me to be a victimless problem. But, if you have spare time to waste, build yourself a shortener. Hell, you will probably get a TechMeme headline out of the deal, just don’t expect me to give a shit.
