Short URLs to Social Services Using Own Domain and .htaccess Redirection

These days, there are many social services we use. I use some of them. Bloggers or websites also provide some links on their blogs/websites to those social service. If links to our profile is easy to remember, that should be great. For example, it’s easy to remember my Flickr photostream using http://flickr.com/orangescale, or Twitter account (http://twitter.com/thomasarie).
But, what about Facebook, Technorati, or LinkedIn? My Facebook profile page is located here: http://www.facebook.com/people/Thomas-Arie-Setiawan/695771665. There is a Facebook application to create more memorable Facebook profile, page or group. They will be something like profile.to/thomasarie or groups.to/AnyGroupName.
Few days ago, @mahadewa and @huda mentioned about this. Anyway, there is .htaccess for redirection. So, why not using it to produce more memorable URLs for our profile? It’s easy. Now, I can have https://thomasarie.com/facebook (Facebook profile), https://thomasarie.com/linkedin (LinkedIn profile), and more.
Since [added later: I have my own domain name,] my web hosting uses Apache and supports .htaccess, it’s very easy to do it. I just put these lines in my .htaccess (in the root folder).

Redirect 301 /facebook http://www.facebook.com/people/Thomas-Arie-Setiawan/695771665
Redirect 301 /flickr http://flickr.com/orangescale
Redirect 301 /linkedin http://www.linkedin.com/in/thomasarie
Redirect 301 /openid http://openid.orangescale.com/thomasarie
Redirect 301 /technorati http://technorati.com/people/technorati/thomasarie

“Redirect 301” means permanent redirection. You can add as many redirection rules there. Just see the patterns there, pretty easy to understand, right? And, I think it’s easier to remember. It also nice if we use it for our business card :)


Comments

8 responses to “Short URLs to Social Services Using Own Domain and .htaccess Redirection”

  1. It’s a good idea. The only thing is, not everybody would have access to his/her .htaccess file, let alone understand how to edit it.

    1. True. I think this will work for those who can access .htaccess on their web hosting server.

  2. Nice tips. Thanks. :)

  3. Thanks, nice tips kang…

  4. thanks tipsnya, mas.
    menarik banget nih, akan dicoba segera.

  5. sudah dicoba dan berhasil!
    thanks sekali lagi, mas.

  6. Kemas, Hamid, Deny …. you’re very welcome!

  7. simple .. but very usefull ..
    txs Thom..