What is the meaning of the terms use like,Direct Redirect?Path Forwarding?etc..
Description of attributes Link Cloaking:
- Default Length - Based on an evaluation of the algorithm and/or an experimental sampling of test cases. Selecting a private option or selecting your own nickname may make the URL longer or shorter, depending on the site.
- Expiration - How soon will the short URL expire and no longer link to your long URL? If a service expires their short URLs, they can be re-used by other people to send folks to other long URLs. If a service is listed as "Never" expiring, this is not a promise that your short URL will last forever, but just an indication that it looks like the service maintainers do not purposefully expire URLs..
- Private - By default, are the short URLs created private (only available to the site administrators and not the general public)? If not, then your shortened URLs are posted on a public page, or anybody can easily guess them.
- Direct Redirect - Is the browser sent directly to your long URL? "No" means that a transition page is shown to the user with the service's branding.
- Statistics - Does the service provide statistics for you to see how many times users have clicked your short URL?
- Editing - Can you change the long URL associated with a specific short URL you created?
- Batch - Is there an easy interface for creating short URLs for a list of long URLs without doing them individually one at a time?
- Subdomain - Can the resulting short URL be an entire subdomain name with no path? For example, does it support http://nickname.domain.com in addition to http://domain.com/nickname ?
- Path Forwarding - Can you append paths to the short URL prefix and have these appended to the long URL? For example, if http://myname.notlong.com redirects to http://longurl.com/users/~mylonguser, then http://myname.notlong.com/apath redirects to http://longurl.com/users/~mylonguser/apath
- Handles Short - Can you generate a new URL even though the resulting URL is longer than the original? This can be handy when you want to standardize your URLs or get statistics on clickthroughs.
- Non-deterministic - Does it generate new, unique short URLs even when you enter the same original URL multiple times? This is good if you don't want somebody else to find out if a URL has already been made short. This is also important if you want statistics on clicks for a short URL you distribute.
- URL Checking - Does the web site check the URL you enter to make sure it is in a valid format and that it returns a valid page?
- Perl API - Is there a Perl module which allows you to generate shorter URLs using this service? Known APIs are available on CPAN in Iain Truskett's WWW::Shorten package.
- IRC bot - Is there a bot on IRC that can automatically generate shorter URLs using this service?
- BBS/Forum - Does the service provide a message posting system where the community can discuss issues related to URL shortening?
- Languages: - In what languages is the service available?
Depending on your use, other factors to consider might include:
- Reliability - Will the service be up when your users are clicking on your short URLs?
- Performance - How many concurrent users can be clicking on short URLs and still get redirected quickly to your target?
- Longevity - How long will the service remember your URL? How long will the service be in business?
- Fine Print - Does the service have any restrictions on its use which may disagree with you?
More:
Consider choosing a URL Shortening Service to cloak your url.
