

Build It: URL Shortener - wrighty52
http://codular.com/build-it-url-shortener

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crcastle
Does anyone else feel that the decision to implement of a URL shortener
shouldn't be taken so lightly? I mean, when you decide to take your URL
shortening service down, all those links your service generated are
effectively dead. There's no way to figure out where they pointed at.

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michaelbuckbee
I would guess that this is aimed more at people who are creating their own
'vanity' url shorteners for their own use than those creating services to
compete with Bitly (or Google's).

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crcastle
Right, that makes sense and is probably accurate, but all the links they share
on Twitter and Facebook and Hacker News are going to stop working once these
people stops running their link resolvers.

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dmor
This is awesome, when I was building the refer.ly shortener I read through
dozens of tutorials looking for different approaches and best practices --
this is the easiest to understand step-by-step guide I've seen so far. I'll
definitely save it for reference

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tigras2
Just dont put it live, main challenge to check if link doesn't go to porn or
even something worse. Because YOU are responsible for content you are
redirecting.

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eurleif
>Because YOU are responsible for content you are redirecting.

Are you?

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jusob
Your hosting provider will hold you responsible. If they keep getting abuse
reports because spammers use you URL shortener in their e-mails. Hosting
providers (including dedicated servers) do not want to be blacklisted by
popular spam lists.

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maarten
The longer the URL, the bigger the benefit of using your service, the greater
the chance it will break. URLs might be too long for a varchar(255) field!

