Create Short URL’s and Hide Your Affiliate Links without Htaccess

I found this great script for creating short urls or hiding affiliate links without the need to edit your .htaccess file. I normally use the .htaccess file to redirect long affiliate urls to smaller more memorable ones but I ran into problems on another site when the site used wordpress. Normal redirects in htaccess look like this:

Redirect /shorturl/ http://superlong-affiliate-link.com?=go.php+affiliateID-etc-etc-etc

or

Redirect /url/ url to redirect to

I couldn’t get this to work when using wordpress on the root of another site and I searched all over google to find a fix but I couldn’t find anything till I found this cool script that gives you a way to do this without having to edit your htaccess file. So if you are using wordpress or you don’t like or know how to edit your htaccess file (some hosting companies don’t give access to the htaccess) you can use Get Shorty. You will need one free mysql database and installation is a snap. Just upload the entire folder to a new folder on your site. Log in and start creating your short urls. I would suggest using it if you promote affiliate programs as it hides your affiliate ID and also makes your affiliate links not look like affiliate links. So instead of a long amazon.com affiliate url you can have something like www.yourdomain.com/go/amazon/

Get Shorty gives you a complete admin section to log into to create your urls and works very nicely. You can create as many urls as you want and even counts the number of times a link was clicked, something that you don’t get when using your htaccess file. If you ever use tinyurl then I would suggest switching to using links on your own domain as you will now be seemingly deep linking into your own site instead of linking to tinyurl’s domain. Also if tinyurl ever goes down, so does your link. Anyway, check it out if it sounds like something you might be interested in. I think it’s a great script. Oh and it’s free.