As of WordPress 3.0, most of this plugin's original features have been incorporated into WordPress itself. WordPress adds shortlinks to most pages by default. This plugin simply adds a settings page where you can easily make some minor adjustments.
WordPress shortlinks are useful for micro-blogging, by using your own domain instead of a 3rd-party short URL service.
The URLs are automatically added to the HTTP and HTML headers of each post, page, attachment, and category.
A template tag enables you to display a human-readable link in addition to the automatically generated headers. Use of human-readable links is highly encouraged, because Google is known to favor them and rank them higher than some longer URLs. This has the effect of boosting the rank of URLs that were deemed "too long" by Google's standards. Also, in many mobile web browsers, the easiest way for a visitor to find a short link is by seeing it somewhere on the page.
The template tag idea can be extended further with CSS code for print media, which could ensure that each article's short link URL is printed along with the article. This will make it much easier for the user to return to the article after reading a hard copy.
- Upload the
simple-shortlinks directory to your /wp-content/plugins/ directory
- Activate the plugin through the 'Plugins' menu in WordPress
The plugin is fully functional at activation. A settings page is included for advanced configuration.
Settings will be preserved during deactivation. An "uninstall" script is included, which will automatically delete the settings data if you click the Delete on the Plugins screen.