Ask HN: Review my attempt to create a non-misleading url shortener. | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Review my attempt to create a non-misleading url shortener.

p4ge.in

2 pointsfizz97210 comments

Well, it doesn't help if the url itself isn't very expressive, of course. So you'd be safe from http://p4ge.in/goatse/1e but not from http://p4ge.in/utube/1d

It's not as short as other shorteners, and just to have something that's easier to remember, couldn't you just use custom urls at existing sites?

It is not supposed to be safer or easier to remember - it's just supposed to help you let your friends know what kind of content they are going to see - I hate clicking bit.ly just to see it's a TechCrunch link, which I usually don't like reading, same goes for video links.

Okay, that's certainly a good scenario for something like that. Apparently I'm either too friend-less or have trained friends and co-workers well enough…

Cool but it makes the url longer again, which kind of defeats the purpose, no?

If you want to improve url shorteners (which are bad for the web imo), you should build a simple open software script people can install on their own domain so that they can create short links to their own pages on their own domain. Much more future-proof (ie. if it goes down, only links to its own domain go down).

This is also based on a great open source script (yourls.org) which also has a wordpress plugin but most content websites do not seem to care about this and keep using services similar to ShareThis which create bit.ly links. I wish services like ShareThis would let site owners point an A record to their servers and host a URL shortening service for their domains.

URLs are longer than usual shortened URLs but are still much shorter than most sites' inner links.

I felt really evil, so I tried: http://مثال.آزمایشی/

It takes it without complaining then offers a non-working gibberish URL in return: http://p4ge.in/آزم�/m

Aren't encodings fun? ;)

It seems like a really nice idea. One issue is that if the domain name is really long, then it doesn't really shorten it (like my domain name: osirisdevelopment.com). Perhaps you could do some manipulation for domains over say 6-7 characters so it looks similar but shorter.

Thanks! I changed it to cut names longer than 7 characters to 7 characters. If anyone finds this useful then I might create a set of words and a shorter but understandable replacement. ('development' to 'dev', 'photography' to 'photo', 'technology' to 'tech', etc.)

input:

http://www.twitteraccounthacking.com/hackmeplox ; http://www.facebookaccounthacking.com/hackmeplox

output:

http://p4ge.in/twitter/t ; http://p4ge.in/faceboo/u

It's an interesting concept, though it's not without its potential abuses.

It is not supposed to be safer - it's only purpose is to help you let your friends know what kind of content they are going to see - I hate clicking bit.ly just to see it's a TechCrunch link, which I usually don't like reading, same goes for video links.

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