TinyURL

This could be one of the biggest secrets known to webmasters everywhere.

TinyURL is a free service that simply takes a long URL and shortens it into a TinyURL. You have probably seen someone using it on Twitter or on a blog.

By entering in a URL in the text field below, they will create a tiny URL that will not break in email postings and never expires.

They even have a nifty toolbar accessory. Once this is on your toolbar, you'll be able to make a TinyURL at the click of a button. By clicking on the toolbar button, a TinyURL will be created for the page you are currently at.

This is compatible with most web browsers and platforms as long as your bookmarks or favorites allow javascript. The links toolbar may not be visible in all setups and in most browsers, you can enable it in the View->Toolbars menu of your web browser. You can also put it in your bookmarks instead of the links toolbar.

With TinyURL, you can also make a smaller URL that will work for any page on your site. Let's say that you have a website with the homepage that is at:

http://www.my-internet-isp.com/~myusername

Entering that URL into TinyURL will create a URL like

http://tinyurl.com/3

With this you can then redirect someone to anywhere within your site by appending a slash and the pages filename to it. So if you have a page at http://www.my-internet-isp.com/~myusername/my-links-page.html, you can use the URL http://tinyurl.com/3/my-links-page.html and going to this URL will forward the visitor to the page in your website.

Hide your affiliate URLs

Are you posting something that you don't want people to know what the URL is because it might give away that it's an affiliate link? Then you can enter a URL into TinyURL, and your affiliate link will be hidden from the visitor, only the tinyurl.com address and the ending address will be visible to your visitors.

Enter a long URL to make tiny:

Firefox users can use an add-on by clicking here.