YOURLS (Your Own URL Shortener) is a URL shortener, like TinyURL, except it's all GPL and you can run it on your own server, publicly or for your own use only. It was made by Lester Chan and myself. Learn more about YOURLS.
This plugin, YOURLS: WordPress to Twitter, is the bridge between YOURLS and your blog: when you publish a post or a page, it will use your own YOURLS install, either hosted on the same webserver, or another server, to create a short URL for your post.
Download
Extract and upload to your blog, preserving directory structure.
Enjoy.
Note: the plugin requires PHP 5 to run.
Template Tags for you theme
The plugin comes with two template tags:
wp_ozh_yourls_url()
Will echo a HTML link with short URL (will generate it on the fly if needed) for the current post.
Example output:
<a href="http://ozh.in/j5" rel="nofollow alternate shorter" title="short URL">http://ozh.in/j5</a>
Suggested use: in the loop, in single.php, in page.php
wp_ozh_yourls_head_linkrel()
Will output a <link/> in <head> for the current post (see revcanonical.appspot.com and shorturl.appjet.net for more info)
Example output:
<link rel="alternate short shorter shorturl" href="http://ozh.in/j5" />\n
Note that WordPress echoes this <link> out of the box so you mostly won't need this one.
You can also use two other functions in your code and plugins:
wp_ozh_yourls_raw_url()
Will return (or echo if you pass true to it) the short URL, with no HTML tag or anything else. Just the raw URL.
wp_ozh_yourls_geturl( $id )
Will return (and generate on the fly if necessary) the short URL for post with id $id
Easy custom keyword
If you want your post to have a custom short URL instead of the random/sequential generated one, when you write a new post add a new custom field to it (button: "Add Custom Field") with name "yourls-keyword" and your custom keyword as a value.
Filters all over the place
If you're a coder and want to interact with the plugin, there are a lot of filters for you to do so. Just read the source and look for what you need (and if you cannot find what you need because you'd like another filter somewhere else, please tell me!)
Shorter URL
Want to share or tweet this page? Please use this short URL: http://ozh.in/m7
Rose, same here. I set it all up correctly without any luck at all. I'm getting the "Bleh…" errors.
hi,
thx for this awesome plugin. works great, but for every new post, it creates 2 short urls with the same target url. any idea?
oliver
Oliver » Never heard of that. How are the posts published? Via the regular interface? Via XMLRPC? Scheduled or instant? Give more details and file an issue there please.
Great plugin and I really like the YOURLS functionality.
It would be great if the WP plugin would support creating short links when adding links with the edit post/page views.
Or, perhaps even auto-generation of short links of all (or selected) links in a post, but that I suppose would require quite a lot more development.
Martin » There is sort of auto generation. Simply add the template tag to display a short URL in your single.php and if the short URL has not been generated already, it will be on the fly at display time
I understand this works to create a short link to the current post. But, I would like to "replace" (external) links in the post with short links. Is that also possible using a template tag? If so, what template tag? I couldn't find it.
Thanks!
Martin » Not possible at the moment
Just wondering if there's going to be an option to add the category to the auto-generated message on Twitter? At present we can just get the url and title.
Scott » This is planned in the next version of the plugin, which will be released errr I don't know when :)
Hi,
Is There Any Possibility That we configure multiple twitter accounts so that the post goes to all the twitter accounts
Thanks In Advance
Aryan Mughal » Twitter spam? Not going to implement something like this :)
Hi,
I dun want this feature for spamming… i work with my friend on a website who wants to update all the twitter accounts will latest news
Cheers for the reply Ozh! Looking forward to the next version! Keep up the good work :-)
Hi there OZH!!!
Long back i had given a request for adding up ping.fm into this plugin.
I remember u informing me that you are working upon it and that ping.fm hasn't authorized the app from their side yet.
Any updates on that??? :)
Sujit Philipose » No. I just dropped the whole idea of doing anything with ping.fm for the rest of my life. Sorry :)
OZH >> its ok… ;)
anyways, i luv YOURLS and your plugin. Would find some alternative way to post yourls link to ping.
Cheers :)
Sujit
Any chance we will be able to enter custom URLs instead of random with this plugin?
Dan » I don't understand what you mean. You don't "enter URLs" in this plugin
Sorry, I meant like in this image: http://yourls.org/images/admin-dashboard.gif
Where you can enter custom short tags instead of randomly generated ones.
Dan » Ho. Not sure how this would be feasible, from a user POV. How do you envision the UI of such a feature?
I was thinking down in the box on the right of the add/edit post/page section.
http://www.d4nz.net/images/yourls.jpg
You could have an input box to enter the custom short tag, if left blank it would be random?
Curious if anyone else was having difficulty with this plugin after upgrading to WordPress 2.9?
It automatically tweets everything but the YOURL shortened URL. When I go to the YOURLs admin panel, no shortened URL was ever made and I have to create one and post it manually. I then delete the initial botched tweet.
The only other change I made was to remove the "Shortlink" plugin by Sam Johnston and Rob Allen. I tried to reinstall it, but received a fatal error.
Any feedback from others would be helpful.
Andy » Nothing in 2.9 has affected how the YOURLS plugin works, except maybe if using the official WP Stats plugin, which has been fixed in latest YOURLS released yesterday
I have just set up my yourls account and got it working great. I used the value applications part to my hosting company RnRGodomains and they instaled it for me. Works great and didn't have to do a thing but input login info and database login info. But I too am not able to get it to send the shorten URL. It is set up right but on my twitter account it will not post the short link. It post the message in twitter and it also puts the shortened URL in my admin page of my YOURLS. But in twitter no link for anyone to link back to my wordpress blog post from twitter. Post is in twitter though. Please help. Everything works great otherwise.
Hi, I was wondering if it would be OK by you to create an 'own-branded' version of this plugin for my own Yourls installation? I would, of course, still maintain links back to your site.
Thanks!
Rob Parker » Sure. Please just don't distribute it as if you were the author :)
Andy, I'm having the same problem, the link is created, show up in custom, doesn't show up in the edit sidebox and doesn't post with the shortened link. I'm using a public api instance on api.mrte.ch
Apologies to Ozh, but Mel, I couldn't get the plugin to work, even after fresh installing a new, updated copy. I ended up switching over to the plugin Shorten2Ping and it is working just fine.
Ozh, I am using the WP Stats plugin and as I mentioned, it still wasn't working even after uninstalling the plugin and reinstalling. I may give it another try if a new version comes along in the future.
I am running version 1.3.3 of the plugin. I am running WordPress 2.9.1 and I have the WordPress Stats plugin (ver 1.6.1). Today's blog post said that it tweeted, but it did not. I used the re-promote and it did show in my twitter feed.
I found that a bit odd, so figured I would checkin here to see if anyone had been having similar. And I see that it is supposed to be working fine with 2.9 and WordPress Stats. So I am confused as to what could be the issue.
I was wondering if you guys have thought of making yoursl truly multi user. Meaning users can sign up for an account, have their own login and can only see their stats? Or is it there and I'm just totally missing it?
Garret » A future version of YOURLS will be multi user, probably
Ozh,
Was wondering if you were open to getting paid for pushing forward some additions to Yourls.
Looking for true multi user with email verification on sign-up.
Extending stats as an aggregate per user would be nice too, enabling true reporting on stats.
Thanks
Garret
Garret » multi user is planned as a future feature of YOURLS, so I'd feel a bit dishonest to charge anyone to code it. Although there's no ETA for it.
I know 100% that this is a user (me) issue! But driving this newbie crazy so just after some help!
I've installed YOURLS in my public_html dir in sub dir /s
I've changed config.php (& included the /s) & tried a variety of paths in the plugin settings.
The YOULRS function works if I navigate straight to the page & type in a url manually, but within wordpress once I post a new entry, this doesn't create a url in the YOURLS page.
I don't even see the screenshot as above in the write page (to re-create short urls)
Gotta be missing something :)
Thanks in advance
Martyn
Hello Ozh,
Love YOURLS, thanks!
I'm having some trouble with the WordPress plugin. It will generate a shorturl just fine, but the tweets never seem to make it to Twitter. Any ideas? Was there something I missed that I needd to install?
Thanks,
Eric
Hmm… Perhaps Twitter blacklisted my site, as I can't even get my tweets in my WordPress sidebar…
Grr!
Still, YOURLS is great! Thanks again, Ozh!
Eric
Works fine on my blog but then I'm worried cos it seems to be creating short urls for posts I didn't specify. Why is this happening?
BTW what is the function of the Short URL auto-discovery in the options page?
Thanks a million
Udegbunam Chukwudi » It's creating short URL for all posts on the fly if you use the template tag, that's the intended behavior
Well the strangest thing is that I'm not using the template tags and still it's as though it's crrating links for every visited page.
Udegbunam Chukwudi » then you probably enabled the autodiscovery short url stuff that inserts the short link in the head of every post
LOL. Thanks a million. That was actually the problem. I've deactivated it and the links are no longer showing up.
Thanks man.
I set up my own remote YOURLS install, but I can't seem to get my site to shorten a URL with it. I keep getting the "Bleh. Could not generate short URL." Error. Any ideas?
michael » your blog cannot access your YOURLS setup. Wrong login/password, or web hosts cannot connect to each other (firewall etc)
Just to double check, I just switched the plugin to using is.gd instead of my own service and received the same error. Is there some specific setting on the server I need to set?
michael » The plugin uses the internal WP API to make HTTP requests. If you can, say, auto update WP or plugins, it should just work.
Ah-ha, I have a lot of problems auto-updating WordPress, so I'll start my investigations there. Thank you very much.
Ozh,
I think there is something wrong with the plugin.
It's creating the short url OK. But it can not post to twitter.
Just to verify if my Server IP was blocked, I installed the plugin at my personal computer. It created the short url, but did not post to twitter.
Maybe twitter changed something. Could help us?
Thanks.
how to connect this plugin with my yourls self hosted installation though api not username and password …. and also want to say that the new version 1.4.2 is giving access anybody to admin without using username and password…
Aryan » 1.4.2 precisely fixes the blank login issue that was in previous versions. Not sure what you mean with "though api not username and password". The plugin does use the API, and you need a login/pwd to connect to it.
Thats what i mean …. let that if my user want to use shorten url of my domain like wlink.in than how can it paste the username and password in the yourls wordpress plugin