However, I really wanted to have custom short URLs and didn’t want to use YOURLs because it’s a bit of a hassle (compared to using bit.ly), and because there are so many plugins available that work directly with bit.ly which made this even easier to use (since bit.ly automatically returns your custom URL to the plugins).

Instead, I figured out a way of creating your custom short URLs in the .htaccess file! I’ll blog a tutorial and refer to this post since it was here that I got the initial knowledge, but all you have to do is add the following line before the rest of the RewriteRules:

RewriteRule ^CustomShortURL$ BitlyShortURL [L]

Note that this will also work going DIRECTLY to your resultant URL, rather than via bit.ly:

RewriteRule ^CustomShortURL$ http://end.website.com [L]

For example, I have http://cjgw.in/quiz setup to go to http://bit.ly/nzutFQ, which I like because I get all of bitly’s reporting features. That looks like this:

RewriteRule ^quiz$ nzutFQ [L]

If I wanted to, I could send http://cjgw.in/quiz directly to my blog post.

Hopefully, this will be useful to anyone who wants to use whatever short URL they want, and change at as and when they see fit

P.S. If anyone fancies taking that quiz (http://cjgw.in/quiz), I’d REALLY appreciate it because it’s part of my master’s dissertation on Digital Literacy.