On: Show HN: I made an open-source Bitly alternative

[efficax]

how else would you embed tracking params into spam links sent over sms, riddle me that

[LinuxBender → efficax]

Query strings after an image URL are the most common I have seen.

    https://some.tld/obvious-tracking/some-transparent.png?someUniqueCode

[sosborn → LinuxBender]

But now you've burned about 40% of your character limit.

[LinuxBender → sosborn]

Fair enough. I hope that should I ever get a smart phone that there are filters to make all SMS text only. My current flip-phone just renders html as text and binary images as garbled junk.

[sosborn → LinuxBender]

> I'm OK with this.

I mean, on a personal level sure, but if you need to get out an SMS with a link and a coherent message, you want all the characters you can get.

[LinuxBender → sosborn]

In that case I would go with a tiny SMS specific domain for the company and a tiny query string. https://my.tld/r?B33F Two hex values should allow for a large number of redirects for a single company. Or even one hex code and use a different letter /a?00 /a?FF /b?AF etc... 36x255

I would give the marketing/sales team a way to update the letter/HEX map as a plain text file.

[sosborn → LinuxBender]

Cool, but now we have implemented a link shortener, in response to a post saying "What’s wrong with normal URLs?"

[LinuxBender → sosborn]

I was suggesting a way to make short url's without using someone elses URL shortener. If one controls the mapping it will persist as long as that company hosting it exists. It wont vanish and the webmaster/developers can update URL's as they see fit.