Show HN: ca.pitali.st, not a weekend, but afternoon project | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: ca.pitali.st, not a weekend, but afternoon project

5 pointsklapinat0r5 comments

Hi hackers,

long time reader, first time "real" submitter.

This is by no means a revolutionary idea, or even execution, but rather something I've always wanted to do, just to see if I could write a good implementation of it.

So without further adieu: http://ca.pitali.st/

Yes, it's just an URL shortener. Please check out the API and if there anything you like about it, please share, so I can take this feedback with me to my future projects.

If there's something you REALLY hate, that's feedback too. Don't be afraid to hurt my feelings; this was put together in less than 4 hours to see if I could beat the 100+ lines of the node js link a few days ago (and I did. this is 97 lines + 6 lines of RewriteEngine).

The reason I submit this is for useability feedback mainly. To get more in contact with "the consumer" (even though I doubt anyone would use this service, but I'd really like it if I could get some consumer feedback).

That's my description, have a good day.

- klapi

Well - It works!

http://ca.pitali.st/CQHTDF

I know nothing about how the algorithms for building these kinds of work, but very cool none the less.

Preview function is especially nice.

Add a submit button - not everyone knows to hit enter without some kind of prompt.

Good luck with your project

I've thought about security (vuln's), collision and security (proper redirects, url validation, js sandboxing), but it is really simple. I can publish it publictly later.

Thank you for the kind words. Button added.

Make sure you regularly submit your db here: http://www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=URLTeam

Let me give you some advice: The hard part about URL shorteners is not the coding work, it's keeping that thing up. You should keep it online for decades to come, even if you just have a few 100 people using it. There won't be any revenue at all and most people will prefer bit.ly over your shortener. Sooner or later spammers will find your shortener and abuse the hell out of it. You will probably get blacklisted, maybe even dropped by your hosting provider.

As for the urlteam stuff (urlteam member here): The best thing would be to just release a text file with all the short url to long url mappings. Make sure that the file is regularly updated and that it works (I am looking at you, ur1.ca people).

Thanks for the insight on url shorteners workings, and the good points.

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