How to Create Custom Short Urls for Your Blog?:Do you wish to use branded short urls for your blog? We make use of wpbeg.in to build our own branded custom short urls. These urls are easy to use and remember & make your brand recognition strong among visitors. In this post we are going to show you, how to easily build your customized short urls for your blog.
Why Use Customized Short URL in WordPress?
Almost all have noticed that popular websites such as New York Times, Facebook, Twitter, Techcrunch use branded urls on social media.
TechCrunch uses tcrn.ch, New York times uses nyti.ms and WPBeginner uses wpbeg.in domain name for customized shorter urls.
These branded names known as domain hacks. They are built by combining the brand name with TLD to spell a brand name cleverly.
Mostly sites uses .com as their primary domain, which is a great way to create shorten urls for your WordPress blog.
Using own customized short url increase brand recognition among users. It allows you to build shorten urls for easy social sharing. Also, you can track these urls to see how many clicks you get from the shorten url.
How to Create Custom Short Urls for Your Blog?
- Buy a short domain or short url:-
Mostly websites doesn’t have short url as their primary domain name. That means you need to enroll for a domain name that is much shorter than your current url.
There are various sites who generates free domain name & also suggest you related domain names.
Domainr is specializes in helping find short domain names.
Once you find your domain name register it with domain provider sites like Godaddy or Namecheap.
Domain name registration cost depends on TLD you want. Country specific TLD’s cost little more than other TLDs. Once you register it you can manage it from domain registrar’s control panel.
- Setup Your Custom Domain in Bitly:-
Bitly is popular URL shortner service that allows you to manage & track links. We make use of it for shorten WordPress urls and manage them.
Initially you need to create a Bitly account & then go to settings. On the settings menu you have to select Advanced Settings and then go to branded domains & then add your custom short domain.
Here you will receive instructions on how to setup DNS records & point them to bitly servers. Below that just add your branded domain name. Before click on verify, you need to setup DNS records.
- Set DNS A Record to point to bit.ly:-
Go to DNS Management area of your domain registrar’s website and look for DNS records. Add the IP address that you have copied form Bitly as a record under DNS.
if you make use of a subdomain for example on.wsj.com, at that point you have to set a CNAME record and direct it toward cname.bitly.com
After including DNS records you can come back to Bitly site and tap on the verify button. if you see a error, at that point hold up couple of hours and afterward attempt once more.
- Set Up Short URL on WordPress site:- The best part about utilizing Bitly is that you can manage it easily, share and track your short URLs specifically from your WordPress site.
To start with, thing you have to do is install and activate the WP Bitly module. Upon initiation, you have to visit Settings » Writing page and look down to the ‘WP Bitly Options’ area.
Here you will configure your plugin setting & connect bitly to your site.