While most users of WordPress will know that to login to the back-end, you’ll need to visit /WP-Admin/ or wp-login.php, but what if you could change that to make it simpler to remember? WPBeginner has a small tutorial complete with a code snippet that you place within your .htaccess file that enables you to rewrite the WordPress Login URL into a custom URL. Telling clients to visit yoursite.com/login is a lot easier than that gobbily gook everyone has to deal with by default. Personally, I’ve just bookmarked the WP-Admin URL for my site and use that instead of remembering anything.
Roll Your Own URL Shortener With Pretty Link
In the past few weeks, the Twitter crowd has seen a popular URL shortener disappear, then reappear. However, the initial disappearance has left many wondering what would really happen if Tr.im disappeared and all those URLs broke? This has lead to a sharp increase in the amount of DIY URL shorteners where you don’t have to rely on a third party. Heck, even WordPress.com/Automattic has jumped on the URL shortener bandwagon as I mentioned in an earlier post. I’m still waiting for WP.ME to become available for WordPress.org but until that happens, Blair Williams has got in touch with me to let me know about a plugin he developed called Pretty Link.
The Skinny:
Pretty Link is a plugin that enables you to use your own domain to create short URLs that you can share. In this instance, my short URLs look a little something like this http://www.wptavern.com/6ut which don’t bother clicking, it’s not active anymore. So I launch into my first gripe and that is, the URL is huge compared to bit.ly or is.gd. But the benefit is that I can control the target URL of this specific URL and it’s housed on my domain so it won’t disappear unless my domain disappears. Also as part of the package, I can turn on tracking for the URL to measure statistics. Speaking of stats, Pretty Link provides an option to either track normally or via a tracking pixel. The tracking pixel is interesting because you could create a special landing page for those that go through your affiliate link with this tracking pixel on it which would provide you an easy way to track stats related to purchases.
Pretty Link also provides options to give the link a temporary or permanent redirect. One of the more interesting features is the ability to forward parameters within links. You can even apply custom parameter settings which ought to be a hit with those who want to share a link to a script or URL that contains a bunch of parameters. For the SEO minded, you can choose to No Follow a link or Follow.
Last but not least, the other major feature of Pretty Link resides in the PrettyBar. Ever visit a link on Twitter that was shortened with Ow.ly and the top of the browser had a big dumb iFrame that got in the way? Now you can do that as well with a full compliment of design options to give your bar a custom look and feel. Thankfully, most of these iFrames provide an X on the right side of the window which makes it easy for me to get rid of. PrettyBar is no exception as it too has a way to easily discard it.
One of the last links you’ll see in the menu will be to Pretty Link Pro. You can’t use Pretty Link pro unless you have a username and password which you’ll get when you pay the price of $97.00 which by the way, is the price of the product before it launches. On September 1st, the price goes up to $147.00. From everything I could read, it seems like the paid upgrade is GPL compliant.
My Thoughts:
There is no doubt that this plugin has a ton to offer for those looking to use their own in house URL shortener that they can fully control, complete with stats and a user designed iFrame. However, there are a couple things that keep me from using a plugin like this for URL shortening.
While it’s not incredibly difficult, I don’t see myself routinely going into the Pretty Link area to create new URLs to send out to people after I publish a post. Instead, I’ll continue to publish the post, visit the post after it’s been published and then create a TinyURL based on the URL thanks to the TinyURL creator FireFox extension. Boy has that thing been a time saver for me. When it comes to short URLs, I’ve decided that I don’t care about stats, and I don’t care about the longevity of a URL. The URL is meant to be short and used right now with relevance quickly fading with each passing day. Tiny URLs to me are throwaways.
I wouldn’t mind seeing some sort of integration into the Write Panel so that I can click a button or create the URL in that panel rather than having to go through two panels outside of each other. Doing all of that stuff in one session would make things much better. I just want to create a short URL to the post and send it out to a bunch of people. I don’t care about anything else. The easier this process is, the more likely I’ll use it.
So in the end, I won’t be using this plugin because my needs for TinyURLs are met by the TinyURL FireFox extension which really does make short URL creation so easy. In fact, it even copies the generated URL to the clipboard for me which is thoughtful. But while this plugin is not for me, I can certainly see the opportunities for it to be used by a wide variety of people, especially those with affiliate links.
Approve, Delete, Spam – How Do You Treat Specific Comments?
Alex Denning over at WPHacks.com has a poll running right now that asks the question, What Comment Types Do You Approve? I’ve taken notice of the different way I handle comments now a days. There are a few things that come into play regarding whether I approve, delete, or spam a comment. First is the content. This is usually a give in and easy to tell whether it’s legitimate or not. The second is the URL. One thing I’ve started doing to combat human spammers who publish semi relevant material in order to get their URL across is to de-link them, then publish their content. I love doing this as it’s like laughing in their face. Third is the type of mood I’m in. Usually, I’ll just delete comments with URL’s I don’t want on this blog. Other times, I’ll mark them as spam. However, one thing I don’t do anymore is mark EVERYTHING as spam.
I’m at this stage of my blogging cycle that bumping up the comment count is something I’m not interested in doing anymore. I still get excited though when I receive new legitimate comments, especially from folks who hang around this area of the web and especially from new comers. If something doesn’t have comments, then so be it. I’ll move on to the next item and see what becomes of it.
Subscribe To The WPTavern Link Roll
I’m not sure if any of you have noticed but on the right hand side of this site on the frontpage, there is a widget in the sidebar called WordPress Links And Resources. It’s been there for quite awhile and it’s my parsed RSS feed coming from my shared items bin from within my feedreader. If I don’t get a chance to write about it or share it in the forum, then I place it into my WPTavern links bin which shows up within this widget. Thanks to some changes I’ve made this morning, you can now subscribe to this link roll with your own RSS reader by clicking on the little orange icon. Or, just keep an eye on that block as every time I open my feedreader, I add a few items to the bin.
Akismet 2.5.4 Adds Easy Link Removal Button
By Jeffro on January 12, 2012
I use this feature quite a bit because even though a comment may come across as spam, it appears relevant enough to the post that I publish it without the benefit of the commenter URL. Some folks don’t like this behaviour and would prefer that either the comment is deleted or published in its entirety. Are you one of those people?
Posted in Plugins | Tagged comments, editing, plugin, url | 9 Responses