My New, Personal URL Shortener

http://dc1.me is now up and running (although just going to that domain will just bring you right back to here). I now have my own personal URL shortener. No more flaky issues with the traditional shorteners. Now I get to have my own issues.

How I did it after the break.

It was pretty simple to get going. I searched for a domain name that worked (dc1.me), registered it and pointed it to my hosting account to get started.

Next I installed YOURLS, an open source URL shortening system, that I was able to very quickly install on my server. I just FTPed the files up, created the database, created a config file and I was good to go. Once I logged in I started playing around with creating new URLs and found everything working just fine right out of the box.

Now I had my own URL shortener, but without integration into my everyday life it wasn’t going to do me much good. I first set my new YOURL install to be my custom URL shortening service in Tweetdeck (my preferred desktop Twitter app). Those instructions can be found here.

Next I installed the YOURLS plugin on my WordPress sites. Adjusted a few settings and my new URL shortener is now WordPress’s default shortener. The plugin also has an option for auto tweeting with your new custom short-url, but I chose to have it only automatically generate the URL for now.

There is also a handy bookmarklet you can copy from the site admin area which you can place on your bookmarks toolbar. So now I’m good to go, total integration!