Recently we wrote this post called “Top 10 Most Expensive Domain Names Of All Time” and as you can see our focus keyword was “Expensive Domain Names”, we should be keeping this in our permalink, so the URL for this post is – https://hostlater.com/2014/04/most-expensive-domain-names-2149/
It’s a typical WordPress blog URL with unique IDs at the end, so it is kinda lengthy and it might look odd when we are sharing this on Social Media or some other place where we are restricted with the number of characters. That’s where short URLs come handy.
For example, we used Bitly (a URL shortening service) for shortening our main URL (https://hostlater.com/2014/04/most-expensive-domain-names-2149/) to a short URL (http://host.tl/1hJUcUF). See how short and sweet it is, now I can easily share this on Twitter and brand our blog as well. Thanks to Bitly Short URL! See?
Top 10 Most Expensive Domain Names Of All Time → http://t.co/U5wt89G2jc
— HostLater (@HostLater) April 4, 2014
Bitly Short URL – How To Create Them For Your Posts?
First you need a short URL, that’s very obvious and your domain name (URL) should be short and related to what your brand or blog is. I picked hbb.me for HellBound Bloggers (HBB), so it probably makes sense. You can use 101 Domain for picking various Country code top-level domain names or shortly known as ccTLDs. So pick a small catchy relevant name and we can move to our next step now.
Then you should get a Bitly.com account, which has both free and paid versions. As of now, we can focus on free version and if you business requires more advanced features, then in future you can migrate.
After creating the account, verify your email address. You cannot set up a custom short domain name until your email address is verified, so do it soon. After that, go to Advanced Settings and there, pick the “Personal” option. Now you have a page where you can enter your short domain name.
Now you have to set your A record for your short domain to point to 69.58.188.49
You can do this on your domain registrar or your hosting (if you have added your domain name there), just go to your DNS section or configuration settings and you’ll find records like CNAME, MX, A, etc. When you find the A record, make these changes. The A record’s “host name” should be either the character @ or your base domain, i.e., your short domain.
Note: If you are using a subdomain for your custom short domain, set a CNAME in your DNS record that points your subdomain to cname.bitly.com
It’s like if you want on.host.tl domain name, then you should enter on as the CNAME. That’s it. If you are done with everything, click on the “VERIFY” button your Bit.ly account panel. If everything is fine, then you should be getting “DNS Configuration: OK” green box like this:
Now you can start to shorten your blog posts URLs or any other lengthy URLs, you can also experiment with various WordPress plugins available for Bit.ly.
You can also redirect your short URL (http://host.tl) to your main URL (https://hostlater.com). Awesome isn’t it? And it’s free. The only main drawback I can see here is the inability to pick custom words for your short URL, like I can’t pick something like http://host.tl/cloud, but I can pick something like http://host.tl/domain-tips. This might be a little drawback for us, but considering it as a free pack, we shouldn’t be really bothering about this.
Don’t forget to use Bit.ly if you are looking for short URLs and do let us know your queries if you have any issues regarding this.