[wesamly]

I am not sure if this the right place to write a HowTo?
I was looking for a short url to use when submitting my website stories links at Twitter, I don't want to use other services as they may shutdown (or maybe hacked) at any time.
the idea is that instead of copying the full link of the story, e.g:
http://example.com/news/the-long-story-title-here
you use:
http://example.com/s11
where the 11 here is the story id.
First you need to add the following line to .htaccess file , somewhere after ##### URL Method 2 Begin #####

RewriteRule ^s([0-9]+)?$ urlshort.php?id=$1 [L]

Caution: backup .htaccess file before editing
I wrote a separate php file to get the id and redirect to the real link which should be urlshort.php:

PHP Code:

//To read DB details
include('config.php');

//DB Connect
$link = mysql_connect(EZSQL_DB_HOST, EZSQL_DB_USER, EZSQL_DB_PASSWORD)
or trigger_error("Could not connect : " . mysql_error());

mysql_select_db(EZSQL_DB_NAME) or trigger_error("Could not select database");

//Get story id passed
$story_id=mysql_real_escape_string($_GET['id']);

//Get the url title and category safe name for this ID
$query="SELECT 
        lnk.link_title_url, ctg.category_safe_name 
        FROM 
        pligg_links lnk LEFT JOIN pligg_categories ctg ON lnk.link_category=ctg.category_id 
        WHERE 
        lnk.link_id='".$story_id."'";
$result = mysql_query($query) or die(mysql_error());
if($row = mysql_fetch_array($result, MYSQL_ASSOC)){
    header('Location: '. my_base_url .'/'.$row['category_safe_name'].'/'.$row['link_title_url']);
    exit();
} else {
    //To redirect to index page if no such ID
    header('Location: '.my_base_url);
    exit();
} 


upload the php file to the main directory (where Pligg installed)
and try as given in the example above.
Notes:

• To get story id move the mouse over the vote button, and check the status bar; you should see something like this:
  

  javascript:vote(1,84,2,'521dc56b8da38c6eca2f77ff9b74421b',10)

  here it is the second number '84'.
  
• this is not fully tested, just wrote it, I'll report any issues here and if you find problems post them.

[Jessemn]

By including the config.php file aren't we already connecting to the DB? It would probably be easier and more modular to use the $db variable and do away with confusion of connecting and entering your username/password directly into this file (just in case it changes at some point).

http://example.com/s11

Also, I think you just mean "http://example.com/11".

[wesamly]

-about the $db variable: I'll check and modify the code accordingly. Actually, when I wrote the code, I was about to publish 4 links and entries in my Twitter account so it took half an hour, it was kind of fast
in the http://example.com/s11, I used s for story, as might someone want to link to category, so he can easily replace the first letter with other choice and update the htaccess file.

Thanks a lot.