I find tinyurl a very great tool for bloggers/webmasters as it helps shorten very long wicked-looking links. It also masks affiliate links from people who are allergic to it. However, there is the danger, though highly improbable, of it not working should the tinyurl service provider undergo some unanticipated failures or accidentally goes offline, thus leaving you with a lot of broken links. With that in mind, I present to you the Pretty Link plugin, a great tinyurl alternative.
I have searched for some time for a tinyurl alternative. I found bitly in the process, but this still doesn’t address the issue of a service that goes on (or, God forbid, goes off) with your blog or website as long as your website lives. I mean, using tinyurl or bitly is like leaning heavily on a cane that you don’t own. You’ll never know when the owner comes and what he’s gonna do later on. I also found some guy who shared php/javascript code that does just what I wanted. It was nice code, as far as what little PHP knowledge I have is concerned. But before I even tried to sit down to unwillingly do the hardwork of implementing his code, I stumbled upon Pretty Link plugin; one that you just install and configure. No more coding and analyzing complicated algorithms, wondering where to insert the codes, running the risk of ruining your whole setup, etc.
The Pretty Link plugin is a wordpress plugin. It is not just a great tinyurl alternative. It is an even better tinyurl alternative because it has other features not found in either tinyurl or bitly. There’s the pretty bar for instance. The pretty bar is a feature that could have stood alone as another separate plugin. But the Pretty Link plugin author choose to incorporate it into the plugin. The pretty bar is an optional feature where you can choose to show it or not. A user who clicks your link will be brought to the intended page as usual. If the pretty bar option is checked, a fixed bar is made visible on top of the that page, and stays fixed and visible even when the user scrolls down or up the page. The pretty bar displays your blog’s name with a live link attached to it, so the user will have no problem finding your blog. With a little tweaking in your wordpress editor, you can also insert all kinds of cool things in it, e.g. ads. And that’s not all. You can also cloak the link such that when the user lands on the intended page, he’ll still see your generated pretty link (which contains your website’s url) in the url box, instead of the intended page’s url. There’s also this feature where you can monitor hits on your link. Nothing but cool wordpress stuff here guys.
As the Pretty Link plugin owner has already given the perfect instructions in the use of the plugin, please go here to download it and enjoy. The link I gave you is one that has been generated by Pretty Link, so don’t forget to glance at the top of the resulting page to check out my pretty bar. It’s still raw and default in terms of looks. But I can change that by adding a background graphic in Pretty link’s admin area if I want to. Isn’t that simply perfect? Well you’ve got wordpress user Blair, the very generous and brilliant plugin author of this tinyurl alternative to thank for.
