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URL Shortener for Joomla

TinyURL is (was?) a popular URL shortening service. To alter such a cool service as using a Joomla site, I developed an extension.

Whom should be interested in this extension

Joomla 1.5 site owners
People planning to provide URL shortening service
People who are using Twitter

OK, I am one of them. Why should I be interested?

Because this extension can help your marketing strategy (e.g. your brand strategy or your branding strategy whatever it is called). With this extension you can use your domain for your tweet or your email.

Your tweet without this Joomla extension
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. http://t.co/sGxg3E

Your tweet with this Joomla extension
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. http://yourdomain.com/u/3fhxR

How does shortened URL look like?

http://yourdomain.com/u/xxxxx
(xxxxx is alwasy 5 characters)

How many URLs can I add?

"x" in the previous question is chosen from 62 characters so this Joomla extension let you have 916,132,832 shortened URLs (62 ^ 5). In addition to the answer, this extension does not delete old shortened URLs.

What is the catch?

If you use this extension for Twitter and your domain is long, you may not be able to put enouth information in your tweet. So if you do not really need to advertise your domain, you may want to use pre-existing service providing much shorter URL instead.

Features

URL shortening
Alternative domain for shortened URL
Enabled to choose whether to provide URL shortening feature exclusively or not
Enabled to tweet about a shortened URL from the result page powered by Like it? Tweet it! (see the screenshot)
API support (Shortened URL is provided as JSON (e.g. your application can use this extension to generate a shortened URL)
Enabled to tweet directly from the result page
Tweet page with URL shortener box

Requrements

Joomla 1.5.X with jQuery extension (jQuery is required if you use Like it? Tweet it! feature)
PHP 5.2.X or later (because I have been developing or using this Joomla extension for http://hironozu.com/ and they are PHP 5.2.X and 5.3.X)
Web Server using Apache with mod_rewrite
Ability to edit .htaccess file
Ability to setup Twitter App at http://dev.twitter.com/ to tweet directly
Your Joomla site is not using the sub directory "u" (e.g http://ideas.forjoomla.net/u)
(this extension uses the sub directory for shortened URL. It can use a different directly name but that requires a customization.)

Example Link

http://hironozu.com/u/mGsde (This shortend URL redirects to http://extensions.joomla.org/)

http://hironozu.com/u/21qMi (This shortend URL redirects to my other Joomla extension page)

Screnshots (How to setup)

Install the extension. Do setup until the backend shows you like this (Moving the mouse over the image let you see the details well).

After finishing setup you drag the bookmarklet to your browser's bookmarks bar. When you got a web page that you want to tell someone or tweet about, just click the bookmarklet. The bookmarklet will create a shortened URL and let you copy it or tweet about it.

Price List

Version 0

This version has the features written in the article above.

The following version is for subscribers (about subscription).

Version 1

This version has the features written in the article above with more sophisticated features (See new features). Version 1 is provided as a different product from Version 0.

At first you can try demo version. This demo basically let you see some user interfaces. Almost no backend logic is implemented. For example, you can see the listing page, but you cannot actually add/edit/delete shortened URLs or Queued Tweet data. You do not have to register this site to download demo.

For subscribers (about subscription).

Feature List

Enable to post to Facebook directly (Currently testing).
Tweet forwarding feature (Currently testing) (This feature requires to amend Cron Job). This feature let us use a Twitter client not posting your tweet to Facebook.
Better appearance for the result page.
Category for Queued Tweet (This feature requires to amend Cron Job)
This feature let you categorise Queued Tweet. You can trigger each of them in a different timing. Category has parameters to enable to control the way to tweet Queued Tweet.

For example, you can create a category that Queued Tweet for the category will be tweeted repeatedly so you do not have to tweet manually every week or every month to promote something.
Scheduled Tweet (This feature requires to amend Cron Job)
Analytics page (I don't plan to implement this feature as it looks like Google Analytics or similar services)

Tags: component

About the Author

Hiro Nozu

Hiro Nozu is a web developer who specializes in building CMS websites with Joomla. He has been in the field for over 10 years, and has been loving every minute of it. Check out some of his past work. He developed the extension Easy Search after the 3 months of involvement in the CMS at iFactory.

This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Comments (2)

yoonique[.net]
31 March 2011 at 22:02 | #
A tweet plugin for Zoo 2.0 would be nice (I see you use Zoo as well :-)

PS Try also our recaptcha plugin for Zoo to reduce comment spam. For free :-)
reply
- Hiro
  02 April 2011 at 13:46 | #
  We can actually display a link for tweet page with a Jumi module. If you want to display the module in a component area, you could use loadposition ("Content - Load Module" plugin).
  Thank you for the suggestion, though.
  reply