Last Updated on December 16, 2015

Most times, we would love to share music download links, our blog posts, posts or  articles we read from some of our favorite websites to our friends either through text messages, Messengers like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Imo messenger etc. Some of these websites have social sharing plugins like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, GooglePlus that will enable you push those posts to any of the supported social networks. But you cannot broadcast these post to your friends without our normal copy and pasting  chunks of links to their inbox and messengers. Generating Short URL now comes into play.

This article  will guide us through generating, customizing those chunks of links we used to share to our friends on their inbox, text messages, messenger handles. Some typical examples are

https://www.chuksguide.com/reducing-your-screen-brightness-with-screen-filter/

http://saharareporters.com/2015/12/16/rivers-state-gov-wike-vows-go-supreme-court-over-his-sack

We should now see that these are quit long to be sent to someone using a small torch light mobile phone. If we could closely, Twitter posts have character limits. A tweet can only go as long as 140 characters, so sharing a full URL with your followers can be difficult. Also, someone may overlook your long characters of link. But if it is shortened, he/she will be appealed to click on it.

With a URL shortener, we could generate a link of maximum of fifteen (15) characters long. A URL shortener is an online application that converts a regular URL into its shortened format. We only have to copy the full URL of a website / post link and paste it into the URL shortening tool to come up with an abbreviated version that is around 10 to 15 characters long. We could even generate short URL if we do not want someone to know the original source of the link.

Creating Custom short URL

There are two URL shorteners that could generate and customize your links for free. They also allow track your shortened links for visitors clicks and statistics but our  goal is to have a shortened link. They are BitLy and BitDo. BitLy will allow you to create a customized short URL unless you are logged. That is, you should register for free before using this feature. BitDo will allow you to generate and customize your short URL without registering with them.

Creating Custom Links with Bit.ly

1. Enter “https://bit.ly/” without the quotes in your browser address bar
2. Click on “Sign up” or Login if you are already registered. You can sign up through your social account like Facebook and twitter or fill the form. Social account would be preferable because it is fast. Complete the registration and sign in.
3. Copy and paste the link you would love to shorten inside the text box and press your ENTER key or wait for a pop up. We would like to shorten this link “http://saharareporters.com/2015/12/16/rivers-state-gov-wike-vows-go-supreme-court-over-his-sack”
4. From the pop up window at the right side, type your custom text inside the customise textbox and click save. We wrote “sac-governor” as our custom text. Your link will be ready to be copied and shared. Our custom link becomes http://bit.ly/sac-governor instead of http://saharareporters.com/2015/12/16/rivers-state-gov-wike-vows-go-supreme-court-over-his-sack

Creating Custom Links with Bit.do

1. Enter “https://bit.do/” without the quotes in your browser address bar
2. Then fill in the boxes as shown in the image below and click on shorten

Your link will be ready to be copied and shared.

Note : URL is the web address that normally starts with http://…..

Conclusion : BitLy is  a great URL shortener but in this article, we would recommend BitDo because it is fast : No registration required, sign up for creating and customizing your links. When choosing your custom text, always make sure that it is somewhat unique and has not been used by someone else.