[Cyril]

Nice idea, but the fading in / out doesn't really feel right. I'll explain a little later, busy right now

[DarkCoder]

cyrilmengin, on 11 September 2011 - 05:51 AM, said:

Nice idea, but the fading in / out doesn't really feel right. I'll explain a little later, busy right now

One of the reasons behind the animation is to give it time to execute the AJAX request to generate the short link.

[callumacrae]

You're just using it for animations and AJAX, why not cut down the page loading time hugely and use real js?

[iCyan]

Awesome stuff

[Cyril]

Urgh, the short urls redirect to the site, so there's a flash of "dl.tl"

[Koen]

cyrilmengin, on 11 September 2011 - 07:31 AM, said:

Urgh, the short urls redirect to the site, so there's a flash of "dl.tl"

No, they're the home url with a hash attached to it. It uses JS to redirect, which is terrible (as long as it isn't Node.js).

[Qasim]

I'm really loving the simplicity and design of the UI. But wouldnt it be more appropriate for the redirect to be server-sided? Every redirect the page first has to load jQuery, do the AJAX and then redirect which takes a noticeably long time. Nice domain you snagged there though

[ShanePerreault]

Javascript doesn't seem to be the answer for a service like this. Good job and all, I mean, it's a great application, but I think something more like a Sinatra app with Redis store would keep speed up and effort small.

[Daniel15]

Looks good so far! As others have mentioned, try making the redirect server-side, it'll make it more responsive.

I bought dl.vc a while ago, "DL" are my initials. I'm kinda upset I didn't get "dl.tl" because I like that domain a lot more (as "tl" could be interpreted as "too long", perfect for a URL shortener)!!

Quote

I am looking to add the functionality of choosing your short URL - I am just not sure how I could fit this into the design. Any ideas?

What is your database schema at the moment?

[DarkCoder]

Modifying it to server-side would be more difficult now that it has launched, because the existing URLs use a # to start the URL (which cannot be picked up server-side).

EDIT: Just pushed a new update - redirect is now done server-side.
JavaScript is still present to make sure that previous links still work.

Daniel15, on 11 September 2011 - 07:00 PM, said:

What is your database schema at the moment?

I can do it in my database, I mean in the UI, I don't know where I could fit the button in.

Daniel15, on 11 September 2011 - 07:00 PM, said:

I bought dl.vc a while ago, "DL" are my initials. I'm kinda upset I didn't get "dl.tl" because I like that domain a lot more (as "tl" could be interpreted as "too long", perfect for a URL shortener)!!

Yeah, I actually got that address the day before yesterday, so it was still available when you searched! But I didn't pick it for the "too long" abbreviation, I just compiled a list of available two letter domains and this was the one that I preferred because I think it rhymes.

This post has been edited by DarkCoder: 12 September 2011 - 10:39 AM

[soulcyon]

Didn't read through whole thread - are you checking for repeated URLs?

e.g, so "www.google.com" wouldn't have 20 different shortenings.

[DarkCoder]

souless, on 12 September 2011 - 12:23 PM, said:

Didn't read through whole thread - are you checking for repeated URLs?

e.g, so "www.google.com" wouldn't have 20 different shortenings.

It does have different URLs, but this is intentional - I intend to add some basic analytics at some point.

[Cyril]

Honestly, at this stage, I'd take it down, finish off the analytics / tracking / redirecting, and then relaunch properly It's going to be hell to maintain / upgrade otherwise, as you can already see

[DarkCoder]

cyrilmengin, on 12 September 2011 - 12:29 PM, said:

Honestly, at this stage, I'd take it down, finish off the analytics / tracking / redirecting, and then relaunch properly It's going to be hell to maintain / upgrade otherwise, as you can already see

To be honest, I don't think that is really necessary. Analytics is the only real thing to add, and I think I should be able to do that without taking it down - I am just going to add some logging to existing scripts, and update the "lengthening" script to treat URLs with a + on the end differently.

[Mo3]

API and custom domain support please, might use this for Meetastic.

Anyway, great site! What language/database do you use?

souless, on 12 September 2011 - 12:23 PM, said:

Didn't read through whole thread - are you checking for repeated URLs?

e.g, so "www.google.com" wouldn't have 20 different shortenings.

This might not be a good idea, it would make analytics hell. If I were to create a short link to monitor traffic to a certain site, I wouldn't want to share a short url with hundreds of other people.

EDIT: Also, what do you use Cloudflare for?

[DarkCoder]

Mo3, on 12 September 2011 - 01:27 PM, said:

EDIT: Also, what do you use Cloudflare for?

Caching, mostly. In the 2.5 days the site has been online, it has saved me 3MB out of a total of 7MB used by the site.

Mo3, on 12 September 2011 - 01:27 PM, said:

custom domain support please

Hmmm, I'm not sure how I would go about implementing this. You could just set say meetastic.com/[SHORT URL] to forward to dl.tl and then just use the (not-yet-added) API to create more URLs?

Mo3, on 12 September 2011 - 01:27 PM, said:

API support please

I'm working on this. It will probably be a REST API.

[Mo3]

DarkCoder, on 12 September 2011 - 01:34 PM, said:

Caching, mostly. In the 2.5 days the site has been online, it has saved me 3MB out of a total of 7MB used by the site.


Hmmm, I'm not sure how I would go about implementing this. You could just set say meetastic.com/[SHORT URL] to forward to dl.tl and then just use the (not-yet-added) API to create more URLs?

No idea, I saw it on bit.ly. You have to point that domain's DNS to their server.

[DarkCoder]

Mo3, on 12 September 2011 - 01:40 PM, said:

No idea, I saw it on bit.ly. You have to point that domain's DNS to their server.

Hmmm... This seems like it might be a little bit too complicated... You could either use the forwarding that I outlined above, or just use the dl.tl links.

[soulcyon]

I use cloudflare too, best DNS host to ever exist.

I hope they add native email support and custom error pages soon D: