LittlURL - Little URLs

LittlURL (pronounced little Earl) is a simple, lightweight form of a URL shortener for Drupal sites. Requests for "n/1" are redirected to "node/1" and if you have an alias for the node the user is forwarded to the alias. Other object types (users, terms) are supported as well and issues to add even more will be happily accepted.

Benefits to this module

• Compared to "node/123" or "user/123" it saves 3 whole characters!
• The destination is on your site, so people see your brand name and can trust that the destination is on your site.
• Which is more user friendly: Something like "ZQE" or "n/123" or "node/123"? neither? both? If you prefer "n/123" then this module is for you

Related modules and tutorials

You can read a tutorial about paths, pathauto, and aliases to create a URL shortener which relies on:

• Global Redirect
• Pathauto

Comparison to other modules

• The shorturl and ShURLy and knurl modules are attempts to build a generic shortener into your Drupal site including links for other sites. They are full of features (and complex).
• The sm00sh project seems to be defunct and has no releases
• The shorten urls module is a generic API which uses other backends to take a URL and provide a shortened URL to that. It could provide support for LittlURL to give you branded, site specific short URLs.

Development Credits

I built this module for Growing Venture Solutions since I wanted a shorter version of our URLS but didn't like any of the existing solutions. We use it in combination with a vanity short URL (growvs.com) to create URLs that are pretty decently short like growvs.com/n/1337 - note that growvs.com is no longer registered so that link doesn't work as an example.

Downloads