Webmaster
Host Your Own URL Shortener with Shorty, YOURLS, or Others
I’ve been in a domain buying mood lately and decided to purchase 404ts.com to complement my primary but longer domain 404techsupport.com. While thinking about having a short URL for the sake of convenience, what else am I supposed to do with it than setup a URL shortening service? Similar to Bit.ly, TinyURL, Is.Gd, and the dozens of other sites out there that provide URL shortening, hosting my own service gives me a few features none of them can: control and branding. If I became dependent on one of the sites out there and they decided to close up shop because they found there’s no revenue in the URL shortening business, all my links would go with them. By hosting my own service, I have full control of the database and the service operating on my server. Also by hosting and using my own domain, I get to brand my links as 404 Tech Support-affiliated instead of a random long link. So here’s an overview of two of the services that I checked out, Shorty and YOURLS, with other options at the end of the article. If you have your own hosting, these services are so easy to setup, it’s worth looking into.
Turning Down Technorati Media and Looking for Ad Networks for Small Sites
If you’ve visited 404 Tech Support recently, you’ll have noticed a few additional ads. One was on the right column and another was on the home page following the most recent article. These ads were provided by Technorati Media. Today, after testing the ads for the past week , I have removed all Technorati Media ads and will not be going back to the service.
WordPress 3.0 Final is Available
WordPress 3.0 Final has been released and as the engine behind 404 Tech Support, I’m interested in their progress. Dubbed “Thelonious” it’s gone through 3 different release candidate versions so hopefully it’s well-polished now and plugins have had time to update. 3.0 has been worked on for half a year and includes “1,217 bug fixes and feature enhancements”. Big new features that I’m excited about include the merging of WordPress MU and WordPress along with, custom post types, and bulk updates for plugin updates.
Google Announces a New Indexing System It Calls Caffeine
Google announced on its main blog and the Google Webmaster Central blog that it has created and implemented a new search index it likes to call Caffeine. The new index moves away from a layered approach to a faster refreshing index that can add new or newly discovered items into search results faster.
So why did we build a new search indexing system? Content on the web is blossoming. It’s growing not just in size and numbers but with the advent of video, images, news and real-time updates, the average webpage is richer and more complex. In addition, people’s expectations for search are higher than they used to be. Searchers want to find the latest relevant content and publishers expect to be found the instant they publish.
Mini-Golf to Advertise Your Site
I’m having trouble recalling an episode of a TV show, perhaps Simpsons or Futurama, where the main joke of a scene was that advertisers realized what valuable real estate the tongue was and they started putting ads on people’s tongues. If I had been able to remember that show (or you tell me in the comments) and embed a clip (assuming it actually exists), it would have been the perfect lead-in to today’s article. Instead, here’s the closest I could find from Futurama:
Bit.ly’s New Features
Bit.ly has revamped its simple URL shortening service and the changes have made it one slick site. Dubbed the Fugu release, bit.ly is now a pretty seamless process with extra attention being paid to sharing via Twitter and link analytics. Having a bit.ly account and linking it to your Twitter account is starting to give some real advantages to websites and bloggers.
Instead of just bouncing over to bit.ly for your link shortening needs, you can also use it to tweet directly to Twitter. Just start typing your message in the big box and paste in your long link wherever you want it. Bit.ly will shorten any links for you automatically and you can continue typing. Once you have your message, just hit the Share button to send it off to Twitter.
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