Fireworks.

There are many things that come to mind on the 4th of July. Things that remind of us being American. Things we’re thankful for. Things that need changing. Things we have yet to do.

Today, I want to celebrate on my blog by combining two of the things on that list: The ‘Freebie’ and the American small ‘Mom and Pop’ business.

I’m giving away 4 free web site and design critique and will write an article with my feedback.

Keep in mind - yes, you’d get a live link on the post. Yes, you’ll get a professional and experienced review of your site. BUT if you do not want to hear where your site needs improvement, and you do not do well with hearing criticism of your site — pass on this freebie.

If you want me to review your site and write about it, hop on over to the contact form. Make sure and tell me your name, give me an email address to contact you when if I pick yours to do and to let you know when it’s done, and (obviously) tell me the URL you want reviewed. Anything additional is up to you.

Have a great 4th of July!

~Nicole

I want something more in tune with the new main site look, but not exactly that. Might go with red, black, and white to match it though.

Time to get out the paintbrush.

~Nicole

If you’ve never tried it, the challenge is to start a new business from scratch and make your first $1 in 30 days.

It’s in pre-season right now, meaning they’re just posting the preliminary info videos right now that will teach you what you need to do to get ready for the challenge and make it easier on yourself.

~Nicole

They’ve got a pretty nice incentive for anyone worried about the planet. First off, the designs are pretty nice, so no ugly badges to suffer with.

Second, the badges link off to a site called One Million Acts of Green, sponsored by Cisco, which tries to promote being green one act at a time.

Third, and pretty awesome of them to do, when the badges have reached 100,000 impression views - Six Apart (the people behind Vox and Typepad) will donate $1000 to The Climate Project, which is one of the best known green awareness projects online.

Aside from all that, there’s nothing on the badges about Six Apart or Typepad or Vox, they’re just images for green support and link off to non-Six Apart companies. Doesn’t strike me as very self-promoting at all for them to do, which is very cool.

You can grab your own badge off the list of green site badges.

~Nicole

Quit Using URL Shortener Services.

Why Not Just Use Some URL Shortening Service?

If you’e arriving at this article directly, head back to part one to read about why to make your own short urls.

Moving Along

Well, so far I’ve shown you ways to work with your existing CMS to create short urls, but the last methods are sometimes less time consuming in the long run but a bit more technical to start with.

Let’s talk about what some good options might be.

If Your Domain Is What’s Long

So what if you have a piece of software or structure that allows you to shorten the end of your url into something more workable. For instance, the last article in this series has a page link that looks like this normally:

http://blog.websitestyle.com/index.php/2009/04/19/make-your-own-short-urls-in-ee-mt-joomla-drupal/

Since I run that site using WordPress, I can also access that page this way:

http://blog.websitestyle.com/?p=458

Now my nice page names can be as long as they need to be, and that part of the URL is nice and short. In this case, it’s actually my main url portion ( blog.websitestyle.com ) that could be shorter.

Using an Alternate Domain

So what’s an easy maintenance option for that? What if I take another domain name and forward it to that. You could make something short, but in my case I just use one of my other domains on this one to manage it (although this may change in the future so don’t count on this being testable forever using the link below).

I take my websitestyle.net (16 characters) domain, and redirect it to blog.websitestyle.com (21 characters).

Redirection Screen in GoDaddy.

So now my short url to that last post will be 30 characters total:
http://websitestyle.net/?p=458

Yes, that’s longer than the url shortened version of tiny shortened version with only 20 characters.
http://tiny.cc/M9CHx

But again, it’s about trust, if I looked at the two links below, I know which I would trust more.
http://websitestyle.net/?p=458 OR http://tiny.cc/M9CHx

Can It Be Even Shorter?

Sure! If your going to get a new domain name, nothing says you have to get a name that is exactly your domain with a different ending.

Anyone who follows TechCrunch.com on Twitter has seen their links done like this: http://tcrn.ch/Uj

Nothing holds you back from finding a creative way to put your site name in the link because it still tells people that it’s your brand, your site, your trust that you’ve earned.

Can I Do This On WordPress.com Blogs?

Sure! If you’ve got a free blog on WordPress.com you’ve definitely got the long domain issue, but you have the built in option to use the numeric version of your post. You’d do it exactly the same way, get a new domain name, forward it to your WordPress.com blog URL, and it works.

My Post Title Is Still The Problem

If you’re not using any of the services mentioned in the second and third articles in this series, then you’re probably going to need another solution to shorten your urls.

Obviously a bit more of a learning curve to do this, but there are definitely options. In a nutshell, you just install some software that basically provides the same functionality as a TinyURL service - but using your domain name.

You can try out the two software options below that you would install on your server hosting:

TightURL - http://tighturl.com/project/

Shorty - http://get-shorty.com/

Wait Wait, Can’t I Just Use mod_rewriting For This?

Yes, but manual mod_rewrites are way more technical than the simple solutions we’re talking about. If that’s what you’d like to look into, here are a few articles on how to mod_rewrite.

Wrapping Up

Hopefully this has given you some options to consider when you’re thinking about using a url shortening service. My emphasis to you would be this:

Keep it yours. Keep it simple. Keep it safe.

Read The Whole Series:

Part 1: I Don’t Trust Short URL’s
Part 2: Make Your Own Short URLs in WordPress
Part 3: Make Your Own Short URLs in EE, MT, Joomla and Drupal
Part 4: This Article.

Quit Using URL Shortener Services.

Why Not Just Use Some URL Shortening Service?

If you’e arriving at this article directly, head back to part one to read about why to make your own short urls.

Short URLs for WordPress

See Part 2 of this article series on making short WordPress URLs.

Short URLs for Expression Engine

Colly.com has a plugin that creates your own short urls in EE. Keep in mind that a new version of EE will be coming out in the relatively near future and I’m unaware if there will be compatibility issues.

Short URLs for Movable Type

This is less of a full solution and more of an explanation of an option available to create short links.

Short URLs for Joomla

This is a URL redirection extension for Joomla that creates shorter urls.
http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/structure-&-navigation/url-redirection/7058/details

Short URLs for Drupal

A few resources for the Drupal folks out there that can help you learn methods of creating your own shorter urls.
1. Automatically turn a Drupal site into a TinyURL-like service.
2. You can use the option of your node number for the link. http://drupal.org/node/76112
3. Try out the Pathauto extension.

Any other suggestions or plugins I’m missing?

Stay tuned for the last installment, coming up on Tuesday, of this article series where I talk about ways you can create your own URL option using a secondary domain name, free server software, or both.

The series so far:

Part 1: I Don’t Trust Short URL’s
Part 2: Make Your Own Short URLs in WordPress
Part 3: This article
Part 4: Make Your Own Short URLs With Domains or Software

Quit Using URL Shortener Services.

Why Not Just Use Some URL Shortening Service?

If you’re arriving at this article directly, head back to part one to read about why to make your own short urls.

In a nutshell, I’ll summarize the whole article by saying that asking people to trust a cloaked link is not something you should ask anyone to do.

Methods of Shortening URLs

There are several different ways to handle URL shortening, and I’m going to list as many as I can think of here.

For WordPress Self-Install Users

If you use WordPress, you have it fairly easy. Remember back to the day you installed WordPress and you had those ‘ugly’ urls that were just your domain and a number? Did you realize those URLs still work? They do, nowadays they just redirect to whatever nice readable format you changed your permalinks to be (which I’m sure you did, riiighhht?).

In fact, you users have two options. Use a plugin or add the code yourself.

The Plugin Option:

A good one is la petite url which uses your own domain to make your short url. When you save a post it shows the short url in the sidebar of your administrative interface. You can then drag this into your post. If you’re comfortable editing your theme files, you can add a bit of code to your single and page files so that it shows up automatically. It’s available on the WordPress Plugin repository here: la petite url

The Template Option:

Just head into your template editor and add a link to your short url into your Single and Page files. This should work fine for most templates, although a highly customized one may have different page types that you will need to add this to separately.

For a simple text display of the link, add the following code where ever you want in your theme file:
<span>Short URL: <?php get_bloginfo('url'); ?>/?<?php the_ID(); ?></span>

If you want to use a textbox type of display where people can easily select the text, try a variation on something like this:
<span>Short URL: <input type="text" value="<?php get_bloginfo('url'); ?>/?<?php the_ID(); ?>" style="width:50%;"/></span>

For WordPress.com Users

As you know, you can’t install plugins or edit template code if you have a WordPress.com blog. You can, however, still make your links a bit shorter than they are now because your posts still have a numeric version available.

You would need to add (manually) text at the bottom of your posts to provide the short link to your visitors. The link would look like this:

http://yoursite.wordpress.com/?POSTID

But how do you find the POST ID for a WordPress.com blog? It’s not hard at all. I’m going to provide two screenshots to show you where to find it.

From the posts list screen:

Finding Post ID From List Screen.

From the editing screen:

Find Post ID While Editing.

Remember, for WordPress.com people, this means adding that at the bottom of your posts when you make them.

The series so far:

Part 1: I Don’t Trust Short URL’s
Part 2: This article
Part 3: Make Your Own Short URLs in EE, MT, Joomla and Drupal
Part 4: Make Your Own Short URLs With Domains or Software

Quit Using URL Shortener Services.

Am I A Twitter Snob?

I’ve been criticized for being a ‘Twitter snob’ for a long time. Yes I got an account early on. No, I didn’t get ‘into’ it for ages. Twittering for a variety of reasons, strikes me as a great way to get out information, but I don’t click on 95% of the links other people post. Why? Well, the short end of it is that I’ve been in the technology field for a decade - I don’t trust cloaked links. Sorry. Yes yes, I know they’re not ‘technically’ meant to be seen as ‘cloaked links’ but that’s really what they are isn’t it? You don’t know where you’re going.

Don’t You Trust People?

Actually, no. I don’t. Trusting everything you see and read and ever link you can click on or every email you open is a great recipe for getting every ugly virus known to man. It’s also a great plan of action if you’re really into making identity theft easy, or if you love having your email filled with spam because you just verified to a spambot program that the email is a good one because it has a person checking the email on the other end.

But.. the People You Follow On Twitter Are FRIENDS!

Sure. Some of them are. But how many of them use Tweetdeck, Twirl, Flock or any other variety of INSTALLED software to do their Twittering? I may trust my friends on Twitter, but do I trust that they can’t possibly ever get a malicious virus on their computer that can take control of their Twittering software and start spamming links? If that happens, what’s the chance that a virus is going to spam links to happy nice places where there’s just a webpage full of sunshine and rainbows?

I have a few friends on instant messengers who periodically have gotten viruses that spam out instant messages prompting me to check out some site. Thankfully, I usually know them well enough to know if it ’sounds’ like something they type. I know people who have gotten email viruses that have attacked their Outlook email address book and sent out malicious emails to spread the virus to everyone on the list. I don’t expect my friends to somehow be totally immune to ever getting a computer virus.

The point is, it’s not about trusting friends or trusting what they have to say, it’s about not trusting people who know how to manipulate the systems and send out malicious data without their knowledge.

What Links Do I Trust?

Links to a domain I know. If I’m following someone, I know their website. I probably read it regularly. If they post a link to a new post and the link includes their domain, I click on it. I read the article, I comment, and I’m a happy camper. Win win, all around.

There Are Addons To Check The Link Destinations…

Yep. There are bits of code that can be added to your browser or your software to reveal the link destination before you click on it. The problem is that about half of these are made to actually have your browser or software do a quick visit in the background to the site and return the link destination. Why? Because those bits are actually more about helping you decide if you want to take the time to visit it and less about security.

Using one of those bits of code, to me, doesn’t at all solve the issue for me. I do not want my browser or computer software automatically visiting a site I do not know so that I can decide if I want to go there. I want to know what the site is without having to visit it in any way - so I can decide if I want to go there.

What Can Twitter Do About It?

In my opinion, the best thing that Twitter can do is allow people to post 1 full URL that does not count toward their character limit. No more shortened cloaked URLs. People can just add in whatever website URL they need to and be done. No more worrying about a URL shortening service going offline or shutting down and none of their links working.

Will Twitter actually do this? Who knows, but unless they change this soon it’s not a solution we can count on.

What Can Twitter Users Do About It?

Stop using use short urls and pester Twitter to allow you to have one full URL without it counting toward your character limit.

What Can Website Owners Do About It NOW?

Much more. If you run your own website, you have plenty of options. The best solution for a website owner / blogger right now? Make your own short URL’s. It’s not as hard as most people would assume, and it’s definitely a better option than letting some service control links to your content.

Part two of this article will show you how and the different options available to making your own short URLs.

What Can CMS Developers Do About It NOW?

Integrate easy short url creation into your website backend systems (and document easily how to find your shorter url) so website owners have access to using their own urls easier.

The series so far:

Part 1: This article
Part 2: Make Your Own Short URLs in WordPress
Part 3: Make Your Own Short URLs in EE, MT, Joomla and Drupal
Part 4: Make Your Own Short URLs With Domains or Software

100 Articles in 100 Days

Ezine Articles is promoting an article writing contest started by a Ning group of article writers. The contest involves writing and publishing, 100 articles in 100 days. Keep in mind that these have to be published on Ezine Articles to count, so read through the linked post if you’re interested. Even though this one has already started, it has only been on for 10 days so you still have time to catch up. The goal is to write 100 articles before July 1, 2009.

31 Days to Build a Better Blog

Problogger is again starting the challenge they do every couple of years. You can read about the 31 Day Challenge on the Problogger site. The first challenge day was yesterday and involves writing an elevator pitch. Today involves writing a list post for the challenge.

Thirty Day Challenge

The 30 Day challenge has been around for quite a while and you can now do the previous year challenges at any time during the year. The challenge, which has had some good success, involves teaching you to come up with an idea for a product, market it online, and make your first $1 online within 30 days. The Challenge is free and none of the things you are asked to do for it involve spending money. The 30 Day Challenge for 2009 begins ‘pre-season’ in June, so you just have enough time to do the 2008 challenge (archived online and people start it every day) and still participate in the 2009 one.

Between these 3, that should be enough to keep anyone busy and full of inspiration for the next month!

~Nicole

1. I’ve changed my blog domain 3 times (a blogger blog, then on enrogue.com, then here).
2. I’ve changed my rss feed location 4 times.
3. I change my entire site look completely -at least- once a year.
4. I don’t push people to subscribe via RSS or email.
5. I’ve taken many breaks over the years where I may not write for months at a time.

After reading an article about people who stress about their RSS subscriber count, I realized I hadn’t even logged into Feedburner but maybe once this year - and that was just to give the ‘ok’ for them to change my feed url to the one run by Google.

Why don’t I care if my numbers are low, high, or anywhere in between? It’s simple - that’s not how I gauge success.

Back in the day, when I first started blogging about web standards and people were still refusing to believe that this small collective of ’standaristas’ had any idea what they were talking about.. I got a lot of visitors to the blog. That was my goal at that point, to get the word out on the topic I was passionate about. I wrote many hundreds, if not over a thousand (don’t recall), articles on the subject for a variety of places. But, time moves on.

Goals change. People have accepted standards. I hit a point where I no longer felt like there was much I needed to teach on that because it became viral, there were tons of other people doing it. So, what next was the simple question. My next goal was to see if I could simply keep writing, finding other things to write about often enough to keep up the blogging habit. I succeeded, I failed, it was flexible depending.

Nowadays, I’m simply happy that if you type in my name or my site name it’s right up there on Google’s main page. For me, this blog has always been an outlet. I’m not trying to have the biggest readership, biggest amount of visitors per day, nor am I trying to have a 100+ comments on each post. I’m not trying to make money off this blog (even though I have a few Google ads on it I don’t think they’ve made any money over the years and I’ll probably remove them entirely on the next redesign). It’s simply a place for me to really discuss topics that interest me now.

So back to the subscribers count - is it a true reflection of … much of anything at all? Nah, not really. Outside the young and the high tech, most people don’t know what a feed reader is yet. Most people are so sick of filled email boxes they just start mass dumping stuff out of their email boxes, including newsletter subscriptions. So what’s a decent measure?

You can consider your site hits I suppose, although that’s filled with various inaccuracies also. What if they got there by accident, or got there and didn’t find what they wanted. If it says they’ve visited 10 pages on your site, is that good.. or does it mean they couldn’t find what they wanted? If it says they stayed on your site for 20 minutes… were they actively looking for all that time or did they walk off and get a snack and leave the window up? Who knows.

So what -is- a useful stat? One fairly useful stat that I actually will look at is available in most statistics programs, and it shows the entry URL. I love seeing my counts for people who typed in my URL directly - which often means they have the site bookmarked or simply remember it. That’s a useful stat, in my opinion.

I had my visitor spikes and huge stats ‘back in the day’ and at this point, I am just writing for the enjoyment of it — which, upon reflection, is really all I should’ve ever been doing with this blog. Note I said THIS blog. I have other sites I am not nearly so flippant about. Sites that are monetized and sites that involve businesses I run. You really need to decide where your position in it all is.

If you have a blog for venting, enjoyment, recreation… keep it that way as long as you can. Like anything, when you turn your hobby into work, it loses some of its charm. If you can, separate your blogs and keep one for personal venting and let your other blogs be for money/business blogging. Sure, you can cross-reference your blogs between each other to share traffic.. or not. Depends on how much separation you want for your own sanity.

I’m not good at talking about really personal things, probably related to the fact that I am cautious enough to never post pictures of my kids or much information about them online - and they’re a huge part of my life. So, instead of a ‘very personal’ blog, my recreational blog is this one — where I talk about the tech stuff that I actually want to talk about, versus coming up with articles just to fill space and meet a ‘post-per-week’ goal.

My suggestion for anyone who is coming into blogging is very contrary to what most people will suggest. Keep at least one blog for yourself. The rest will come, or not. If you don’t enjoy listening to yourself talk, maybe you will do better with social networks than blogs. Save the numbers game and worry for a site/blog you have attached to something that brings in money. Let your personal blog simply be as it is, and evolve with you — faults, mistakes, errors and all the rest.

~Nicole