Comments on: Creating a “GoTo” URL For Your WordPress-Powered Site

By: Jason

Jason — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 15:06:53 +0000

brilliant and simple. thanks!

By: Ikki

Ikki — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 02:02:07 +0000

Smart move! Damn I was expecting something more difficult when I first read your post’s title hahaha

This is one clever idea! Thanks for the tip!

By: Hannah

Hannah — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 23:01:03 +0000

Hey, that’s a great tip, thanks for sharing!

By: trevor

trevor — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 18:29:51 +0000

Micheal, this is brilliant, short and elegant. I love it.

@hypotheek – One primary reason that it might not work is if your service provider was using the common apache config files to configure everything. I used to do this before I figured out that this was another way.

When an isp or service provider is using something like plesk or another management tool, there is one apache directive file per domain instead of 50+ domains being managed by one file.

The long and short of this, is that even though a few users have access to their own apache config files, ISP’s don’t want the headache of repairing them, so they allow .htaccess functionality to occur directly in the folder where something needs to be acted on, instead of the older method of embedding such functionality into a very long complicated apache config file or even the newer method of putting htaccess type functionality in the config files that can get messed up.

Btw, the other less elegent way of hiding a long url is to allow the long url to exist but to use javascript to ensure that a user’s mouse over always shows **something else** ha ha. Used sometimes as a hack to protect clickbank affiliate account urls.

Well Done, Michael, I am going to use this too. In truth, it looks so useful, i think i will try to memorize the lines.

By: Michael Clark

Michael Clark — Tue, 20 May 2008 02:26:49 +0000

@Todd, If you use a “goto” directory of some sort, you don’t need to tweak anything again, any value passed to that url will redirect automagically.

By: Todd

Todd — Tue, 20 May 2008 01:48:13 +0000

How is this any different than simply rewriting the htaccess by hand and creating a condition / response that numbers each post incrementally?

By: Michael Clark

Michael Clark — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 12:17:50 +0000

@Mark – Don’t use SpamArrest – you are causing headaches to people by forcing others to deal with your spam. I have unsubscribed you from having comments emailed to you.

Several years ago, SpamArrest used the email addresses of people that sent messages to SpamArrest’s customers for the marketing of SpamArrest’s services. They may not do that anymore, but challenge response is still a bad way to deal with spam.

By: Michael Clark

Michael Clark — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 11:16:17 +0000

@Mark, You could us a redirect plugin, but why load yet another plugin? Yes, a plugin would allow you to use an abbreviation of your choice for each post, but I assume then you’d need to edit each post to define a custom field. This system is fairly automatic, and simple. With my suggestion, you also don’t need to worry about naming conflicts.

By: TheAntiHype

TheAntiHype — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 19:41:46 +0000

I’m not a techie but could you achieve the same result by using a 301 redirect plugin? I have a plugin that allows a long ugly post URL to be pasted into the field and an automatic redirect to a new page is created. In your example you could just redirect to a new page you created with the title you want – eg showbizradio.net/promo

Have I missed something?

Mark Wilson

By: Shaun Cartwright

Shaun Cartwright — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 19:26:21 +0000

Thanks for the info. I also use WordPress, so this function may come in handy.

I also do not feel comfortable giving away any control of my sites to a third party. Great info, thanks again.