Posted on May 7, 2009 - by Wayne Sutton
How to launch your own TinyURL service using WordPress. Yes, I have one too: s1w.com
As you know the conversations about TinyURL services have really taken off the last few weeks. We have seen reports about bit.ly raised $2 million in funding, the diggbar launches with tons of controversy and just yesterday Twitter ditched TinyURL for bit.ly. The bit.ly team must be either real excited or real nervous about their future, either way congrats to them. Also a new custom TinyURL service called Awe.sm just launched that provides custom url and statics for your own domain name at $99.00 a year. But what if you wanted to launch your own TinyURL service for let’s say, the cost of a new domain name $7.99, one hour and another wordpress install? That’s what I’ve done with the help of a few blog post. Here are the links for your reading and the outcome.
Instructions – Installing Your Own WordPress-Based DIY TinyURL In < 1 Hour
The results from following the instructions from the link above:
I have http://s1w.us domain name which stands for Short ones by Wayne. 
that auto redirects to socialwayne.com
I have a PressThis bookmarklet that creates a custom TinyURL using s1w.us, example: http://s1w.us/twtconf is from http://socialwayne.com/2009/05/05/twitterconferences/
I have a wordpress login to monitor stats using WP-ShortStat and Wassup.
If you’re not familiar with FTP, PHP or customizing wordpress I suggest that you hire someone (hint) if you would like to create your own TinyURL service using the option above. Another option for WordPress users is the RevCanonical plugin. RevCanonical “generates a short url for your pages, as well as adding link shortening discovery.” For example by installing RevCanonical my default post url: http://socialwayne.com/2009/05/05/twitterconferences/ was shorten to http://socialwayne.com/pin . You’ll also need a bookmarklet called Shorten to display the custom RevCanonical URL.
For bit.ly and wordpress users, the creator of RevCanonical has a plugin called TweetMe that will auto create a bit.ly URL or use your own domain’s RevCanonical url and send a tweet for each new post. This seems to work well versus using TweetSuit or TwitterTools to auto send a tweet when you publish a new blog post.
Corvida asked on FriendFeed: “What’s URL shortener do you use?” My response was bit.ly and idek.net now I can add my own TinyURL service to the list, http://s1w.us
Some of you may be asking why create your own TinyURL service? For me it was, I wanted more control over my links, I thought it was good for SEO and sharing on twitter and I thought it was a super geek cool thing to do. But here’s a blog post called: 10 Reasons To “Roll Your Own” TinyURL Using WordPress, if that’s not good enough for you.
The only thing left for me to figure out is how to add my custom s1w.us or RevCanonical url to my post like TechCrunch has (see image below).
More links about creating your own TinyURL service:
Create Your Own Short URL and Keep the Branding to Yourself
URL Shortening Hinting
la petite url
Have you created your own TinyURL service or thought about it? Did you ever think TinyURLs would be this big?
Related Posts:
Share post bit.ly url: http://bit.ly/HgKYi
About the Author
Written by Wayne Sutton
Wayne is the business development/marketing strategist for TriOut and partner at OurHashtag. For more, follow SocialWayne.com on Twitter, Buzz, and Facebook. Also check out the SocialWayne Podcast in iTunes. See all posts by Wayne Sutton.
Tags: bitbit.lyBlogscreatecustomgoogleideklink brandingpersonal brandingpollredirectssearchseoshortnershortstatsstatstechcrunchTinyURLTweetsTwitterurl shortnerwordpress
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07. May, 2009
RT @waynesutton: New blog post: How to launch your own TinyURL service using WordPress – > http://s1w.us/wptiny
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07. May, 2009
Cool for personal branding. RT @waynesutton: New blog post: How to launch your own TinyURL service using WordPress – > http://s1w.us/wptiny
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07. May, 2009
Now, if I can just find a short URL to use! How to launch your own TinyURL service using WordPress. http://is.gd/xvwa by @waynesutton
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07. May, 2009
RT @waynesutton: New blog post: How to launch your own TinyURL service using WordPress – > http://s1w.us/wptiny
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07. May, 2009
How to launch your own TinyURL service using WordPress. Yes, I have one too: s1w.com http://tinyurl.com/d7azfx
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14. May, 2009
How to launch your own TinyURL service using WordPress. Yes, I have one too: s1w.com [feedly] http://tinyurl.com/q9llcn
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12. Jun, 2009
launch your own tinyurl service >> http://bit.ly/QJRjc
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10. Aug, 2009
@andyhat You could make your own as shown here: http://bit.ly/rsSvW
- - 10. Aug, 2009
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May 7, 2009
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Angela Connor said:
Wayne, you are always ahead of the game, thinking planning and sharing. That is one of many things that make you so great to know. Perhaps this is something I might want. Never gave it much thought but will certainly talk to you about hiring you to do it for me.
Angela Connor’s last blog post..Are debt collectors infiltrating social media?
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May 7, 2009
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Wayne Sutton said:
Thanks Angela, it’s almost time for us to meet again. Congrats on your book too. I’ll email you soon.
Wayne
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May 7, 2009
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SisyMoney said:
Makes me wonder… would Coca Cola want their url to be shortened and meaningless?
Is shortening the url only due to limited number of characters in twitter or is it to take advantage of peoples curiosity. In the end sneaky tactics don’t pay off. But as a geekfactor to be able to pull it off using wordpress and a few tricks, thumbs up!
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May 8, 2009
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Wayne Sutton said:
@SisyMoney thanks for the comment. Not trying to do anything sneaky, the blog post tells it all. Besides why use bit.ly or another service that would go back to bit.ly for shorting urls when I can have full control over my TinyURL and have better control over the stats too.
It’s just an extra added bonus if people decide to remove the other part of the url and go to the root url.
Thanks for the thumbs up. Let’s see how things go after a week or so.
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May 9, 2009
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Jenny Kumar said:
I really liked your post.
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May 20, 2009
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jason said:
i like it
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June 4, 2009
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youfoundjake said:
Hey Wayne, thanks for the link back to us about creating a short url internally instead of using other services..
Phil Nelson came up with the la-petite-url plugin which works great for what I wanted.
I modified a little code as you can see to return a 301 instead of 302 on the short url. One thing also to mention, is that since I have a 301 redirect on the domain, I can remove the www. from the address and free up 4 characters, which is quite a lot when you are limited to 140 characters by default, unless you are using a supertweet which will give you up to 250 characters..
The next thing to do is add tracking, and maybe an internal short to an external site, but not quite sure that would work since the redirect passes the juice, but again its good for branding..
youfoundjake’s last blog post..Create Your Own Short URL and Keep the Branding to Yourself