Shorten your URLs with YOURLS, & then set up Tweetbot & Netbot to use YOURLS

I’ve been using URL shorteners for quite a while. Yes, I know the critiques, but URL shorteners are pretty much essential if you use Twitter or ADN or any other micro-blogging service. I want to know what people click on, how many people click, & so on. I’ve been a Bitly user for years, especially once they allowed you to use your own short domain name for free. Once that deal started, I linked granne.me to Bitly and really started using it heavily.

Then came the so-called “upgrade” to Bitly a few months ago. Boy, did they louse up their service. It went from being simple to use & very focused on shortening URLs to a wanna-be Delicious eompetitor with a stupid UI that made shortening URLs a multi-step afterthought. In disgust, I swtiched to Google’s URL shortening server, Goo.gl. It was OK, but I really wanted more control, especially by using my own URL.

Since I wasn’t happy with either, I just kinda switched back & forth between them, depending upon the software I was using at the time. Finally, I read about YOURLS, a PHP/MySQL program that you install on your server & configure to work with your URL of choice. I happened to have a short domain registered that I wasn’t really using—chnsa.ws—so I downloaded, installed, & configured YOURLS & gave it a whirl.

You know what? It’s pretty cool! I like it, & so far I think YOURLS is working out well. Consider this a recommendation: if you want to set up your URL shortening service, you should really consider YOURLS.

But there was one small issue: what about Tweetbot (the best Twitter app for iOS & Mac OS X) & Netbot (the best ADN client for iOS & hopefully soon Mac OS X)? The two ’bots provide the built-in ability to use a few URL shortening services (Goo.gl & Bitly, for instance), or—& this is the cool part—you can specify your own. Problem is, there’s not a lot of help in that area. Fortunately, I found this article at 2fatdads.com (great domain name, btw) that tells you all you need to know: How to Make YOURLS.org Work in Tweetbot

In essence, you go to http://YOURDOMAIN.COM/admin/tools.php¹ & scroll down to the section titled “Secure passwordless API call”, where you will find your “secret signature token”, a string of 10 letters & numbers. Once you have that info, you enter the following in to Tweetbot & Netbot:

http://YOURDOMAIN.COM/yourls-api.php?signature=SECRETTOKEN&format=simple&action=shorturl&url=%@