{"id":2106,"date":"2010-10-12T07:52:08","date_gmt":"2010-10-12T07:52:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/?p=2106"},"modified":"2010-10-12T10:33:15","modified_gmt":"2010-10-12T10:33:15","slug":"setting-up-a-custom-url-shortening-service-using-bitly-pro","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2010\/10\/setting-up-a-custom-url-shortening-service-using-bitly-pro.htm","title":{"rendered":"Setting up a custom URL shortening service using Bitly.Pro"},"content":{"rendered":"

If, like me, you’ve been reading the stories about Libya taking back control of certain .ly addresses<\/a>, then you might be thinking “what about all those\u00c2\u00a0short URLs I’ve been sharing?”. For those who haven’t read the story, the Libyan authorities have been reclaiming addresses from sites whose content breaches Sharia law.\u00c2\u00a0 Bit.ly<\/a>, the American-based link shortener that’s become very popular since the demise of tr.im<\/a> doesn’t think it’s at risk<\/a>, even though some of the content it signposts might offend those of a Muslim faith, because: it doesn’t actually host the content; and bit.ly addresses are also accessible using the slightly longer bitly.com<\/a> URL (for example, resolves to the same address as bitly.com\/markwilsonit<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Even so, I decided to implement my own custom domain for link shortening – one that I have control over.<\/p>\n

I decided to stick with a top level domain from a country that’s not likely to take back the address and, even though Italy (.it) is a slight risk to me as I don’t live\/work there, .it domains are officially available to anyone who resides within one of the European Union member states (and that includes the UK), giving me some legitimate claim to the domain at least. Unfortunately, I found that I couldn’t register any 2 or 3 character domains, but Matt Marlor<\/a> suggested I go for mwil.it<\/a> and, yesterday, I successfully registered that domain.<\/p>\n

Incidentally, if you’re looking for a short domain name, DomainR<\/a> is a website that will work through various permutations of your name\/company name and flag those that are valid\/available.<\/p>\n

Grabbing the domain is only the first step though – I also needed a link shortening service. I could have implemented my own (indeed, I may still do so) but decided to use the service instead, thinking that I can still migrate the links at a later date, should that become necessary.<\/p>\n

One of my friends, Alex Coles<\/a>, asked why I selected the Bitly.Pro route rather than using a script like YoURLs<\/a> and, aside from the fact that would be something else for me to manage on my webspace, the Bit.ly API is widely supported by many of the other services that I use – like TwitterFeed, and TweetDeck – reducing the effort involved in generating new short links.<\/p>\n

At the time of writing, Bitly.Pro is still in beta but I completed the form to apply to join and, shortly afterwards, received an e-mail to say I was in. At that time I hadn’t registered my domain but, once that was done, it was a simple case of:<\/p>\n