Shortlinks

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Revision as of 11:12, 2 March 2010 by Paul Thompson (talk | contribs) (added stats / tracking details)
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About Shortlinking

General Information

Shortlinks are short URLs which redirect to a longer URL. Shortlinks are easier to remember and type then a long URL. URL shortening services emerged several years ago with tinyurl.com. Nowadays other sites such as bit.ly are more popular. More information about the topic can be found in Wikipedia's URL Shortening article.

An example shortlink would be as follows: 

   http://freegle.it/Central -> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FreegleUK-Central

Freegle Shortlinking

Shortlinking is used quite a bit within Freegle.

Why Shortlink

Using shortlinks is useful for a Freegle mod in a number of ways.

First, it is practical to use shortlinks when publishing the website address for your local Freegle group on pamphlets, business cards, bumper stickers, posters, etc. A potential new member will much more easily remember a shortlink then the longer Yahoo group URL. 

   http://freegle.in/Ambridge -> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Ambridge-BorchesterFreegle

Additionally, the shortlink is easier to type and faster to write down for someone taking note. As noted below, Freegle.in shortlinks are centrally provided for all Freegle groups.

Second, shortlinks are by definition, short. Thus they are useful for displaying graphics and linking to other pages in the Yahoo group description for your home page. For instance: 

   http://frgl.it/d1 -> http://freegle.it/images/disclaimer/FreegleDisclaimer-v1-Border.png

This shortlink can be used to display a standardised and centrally hosted Freegle disclaimer on your Yahoo group page. The full URL would use 67 characters versus the much reduced 17 characters of the shortlink. A savings of 50 is great, especially considering you may have a dozen graphic or link URLs in your Yahoo group description.

Third, shortlinks are useful for providing easier to access URLs in place of more complicated ones. For instance, the following shortlink links to our Freegle Who's Who spreadsheet. 

   http://freegle.it/WhosWho -> http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=tHlrrV6stByNXhbGduUVHrQ&output=html

Obviously the Google Documents target link is quite a mouthful. Comparitively the shortlink is quite easy to remember and type. It also is a self-descriptive link - it is not hard to tell where the shortlink goes, while the long URL is a mystery until you actually load it up.

Lastly, shortlinks are internally useful by Freegle mods as they are simply easier to remember. If you wanted to visit the Freegle Who's Who spreadsheet above and could not use the shortlink, you would likely have to visit another a web page or use a bookmark to find a link to the Who's Who spreadsheet. With the shortlink you can quickly load up the spreadsheet without having to go anywhere else first as http://freegle.it/WhosWho is easily remembered.

A URL shortlinking service has been setup for Freegle using the domains freegle.in and freegle.it / frgl.it.

Freegle.in

Freegle.in shortlinks have been setup to make it easier for Freegle mods to connect people with their local Freegle groups on Yahoo. These provide redirects to each group's page and are setup and maintained by the Freegle shortlinking team (which is currently recruiting).

Additionally, several other shortlinks are setup at Freegle.in for redirecting to another location based Freegle page. For instance, Freegle UK region shortlinks have been setup at Freegle.in which redirect to the appropriate "Find a Group" region page on the Freegle website. And a UK shortlink has been setup which redirects to the top level Find a Group page on the Freegle website. Lastly, those interested in Freestock can visit http://freegle.in/aField.

To see the currently configured Freegle.in shortlinks, please visit http://freegle.in. Changes can be requested via a form on thage page or by emailing shortlinks@iLoveFreegle.org.

Freegle.it

Freegle.it shortlinks are setup as needed for more miscellaneous targets, such as Freegle moderator discussion groups or Google documents that we want to make easily findable. To request a shortlink added, please email shortlinks@iLoveFreegle.org.

Freegle.it shortlinks are also used for shortlinking to commonly used images, our favicon, etc.

All Freegle.it shortlinks can also be accessed by using the domain name frgl.it. It is advised to use freegle.it when the URL will be visible and character limitation is not an issue. The shorter version frgl.it is better used when the URL is not visible and when character limitation is an issue.

Tips & Tricks

Please note that all Freegle.in and Freegle.in shortlinks are case insensitive. For example, the following are all equivalent.

Of course, the last option is a bit insane. ;)

Also, all Freegle shortlinks automatically have statistics gathered regarding how often they have been used, what sites are linking to them, etc. To visit the stats page for a shortlink, just add a plus sign (+) to the end of the URL. For instance: http://freegle.it/WhosWho+

In the near future the shortlinking application will be extended to allow shortlinks to optionally log tracking details via Google analytics as well. This will allow individual groups to provide the Shortlinking team with a Google analytics web property ID (the UA-XXXXX-YY number) which will then be used for tracking visits to your group page via a Freegle.in shortlink.

Notable Freegle Shortlinks

There are shortlinks to the core Freegle documents as well as the main Freegle moderator discussion groups. Some of these are listed below.

Google Documents

Main Groups

Working Groups

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