I want to know from experienced people who have their own link shortner. I am planning to make one for myself but have no experience as such. I read a lot about them on google but I cannot find the answers what I am looking for. So here are my questions

1) What would be the yearly cost for such services. I am planning to make it open for public in future so want to know my expenses

2) Where do you suggest hosting for such kind of url shortners? Off shore or with reputated companies?

3) In which programming language should I code it in? Or should I just buy it from people who are selling these services?

Thanks in advance for your replies.

Ps: My URL shortner will be used only for White Hat purposes and open to public. So I am guessing that the traffic could increase eventually.

Bump

Check out yourls, it's free and is probably just what you're looking for.

I have an URL shortener hosted on shared hosting without problems.
It's in PHP/MySQL, full website size is around 1Mb and database is light too...

The hardest part is to find a short domain to buy...
Mine is in .US.

Beny

I have read yourls.org but that is not something I am looking for. I am going to make a customised urlshortner. Hence I want to know the cost involved for maintaining such shortner.

Anyone else who could share some insight on this?

Originally Posted by virtual.indiano

I have read yourls.org but that is not something I am looking for. I am going to make a customised urlshortner. Hence I want to know the cost involved for maintaining such shortner.

Anyone else who could share some insight on this?

I don't understand exactly what you are looking for...
But if you just want to short some URLs with customized strings, you can simply use an .htaccess file on your root hosting.

Example :

Code:

Redirect /kj2bG http://www.google.fr/

So, if your domain is mydomain.com, the short URL mydomain.com/kj2bG will redirect to Google.fr.

Beny

Originally Posted by virtual.indiano

I am going to make a customised url shortner.

Where is the problem with Yourls ?
It's light, it's free, it's easily customizable, ...

Originally Posted by virtual.indiano

I am planning to make one for myself but have no experience as such.

You want to build one from scratch ? Without experience ?

As said above, cost is light and depends of your traffic.
Domain + hosting = $50/year.
Script can be free.

All answers have already been posted in this thread.

Beny

Thanks for all the answers. It has certainly helped me in taking my decision.

I have 4 short url websites. I use them for twitter marketing and people can also use it for free.
You will have the most problems with spammer who use your url shortener for viagra an childporn.

Originally Posted by liftbeisl

I have 4 short url websites. I use them for twitter marketing and people can also use it for free.
You will have the most problems with spammer who use your url shortener for viagra an childporn.

So how do you take care of them? Any tips shared will be appreciated.


Cheers!!

Block IPs, block websites

It's a never ending story...

Originally Posted by mutatedllama

Check out yourls, it's free and is probably just what you're looking for.

Is it somewhat easy to integrate with adbrite to monetize it with the full page ad?