Use bit.ly URL Shortener’s Firefox Plugin to shorten and preview links
There is no need to re-describe why URL shortening is necessary. The trend mostly started when the usage of twitter increased, but there is a lot more uses of shortening a long URL to a short one. And that’s what URL shorteners like bit.ly, tinyurl etc have been doing.
According to my opinion, for a blogger it is necessary to take advantage of any of these URL shorteners. You can easily shorten any long URL from any URL shortener website’s homepage. But don’t you think it takes a little more time to shorten that URL by heading over to another website? That’s when you need to make your browser supportive for your work. And obviously that’s why Mozilla’s Firefox browser is the best and most recommended of this time.
How do I shorten my URL
Let’s imagine I’ve just written a post and want to publish it now and share its URL with my twitter and facebook friends immediately after publishing it — without doing anything else. I just hit the blue Publish button and wait for the post to be published. Once the post has been published, the page redirects me to the editing panel of that post where a yellow bar informs me that the post has been published.
Did you notice the message has a “View Post” phrase linked to the just-published post? I right click on that link and click an option that orders bit.ly to shorten my link. It takes less than a second to shorten my link and the shortened bit.ly URL is automatically copied to my clipboard. As easy as a click!
If you are also a fast-working blogger like me, then what you will ask me is How do I do that?
Add bit.ly extension to Firefox
Click here and click the “Add to Firefox” button to start downloading the bit.ly firefox extension. Once download is completed, you’ll need to restart your browser in order to activate the extension. Click the “restart Firefox” button. Don’t worry, all of your tabs and windows will be safely restored.
Uses
There are two major use of this Firefox extension. They are:
- Shorten a URL: You don’t need to go elsewhere in order to shorten a link. Just right click on an active link (or a hyperlinked anchor text) and choose “Shorten with bit.ly” option. In a second you’ll see a message saying that your link has been shortened and the shortened bit.ly URL has been copied to your clipboard. Now you can simply paste the shortened URL to twitter, facebook etc or share with anyone via IM. Also if you don’t want to bookmark the link, shorten that and write down the link anywhere you want. It’s as short as about 12 characters.
- Preview a shortened URL: Before you proceed to a shortened URL, you can simply check the URL and the title of that page by hovering your cursor over any [not only bit.ly] shortened URL. As long as the Firefox extension is active, you will see the title and the URL of the shortened link.
Why I suggest bit.ly?
No specific reason; I just like bit.ly. You can check your statistics at http://bit.ly/yoururl+. Just add an extra “+” at the end of the shortened URL. You will be redirected to the statistics page where you can see how many clicks you got from that link and how many times the link has been published in both twitter and friendfeed.
Also, bit.ly has the easiest way of checking the URL before you visit that site.
What do you use?
So, do you already use bit.ly to shorten your URLs? How do you find it? Good, or bad? Do you use some other URL shortener service? Why do you/don’t you think that bit.ly is the best? Share the answers with me and my readers by posting a comment below.
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