Friendly URL’s with Sidepath

Sidepath is a quick and easy URL re-direct application that ties in with your web site.

Pain in the Tech originally discovered Sidepath here.

Sidepath is TinyUrl to the next level

What is Sidepath

Many people have used TinyUrl.

Sidepath is TinyUrl to the next level.

We all know what long URL’s are, especially when we try to share a link with someone. They are evident at big sites like Amazon, eBay, and practically any news site you can think of. Long URL’s are scattered all over the internet, causing broken links (when sharing the URL with someone), and are simply not intuitive for the end viewer.

There’s must be a better way to point someone to a site, without having to copy/paste that enormous URL.

Enter Sidepath.

The concept of Sidepath is quite simple. Let’s say you have a URL that you’d like to share with someone - either via email, instant message, or even SMS. Rather than providing them with a very long and indecipherable URL - you can provide them with a short, concise, and understandable reference to another web site.

The nice part is, the URL “looks and feels” like it came directly from your site!

For example, let’s take this really long Amazon.com URL, and format it for Sidepath:

Old URL:

http://www.amazon.com/MySQL-Developers-Library-Paul-DuBois/ dp/0672326736/sr=8-1/qid=1159210873/ref=pd_bbs_1/ 104-2647715-9206340?ie=UTF8&s=books

As you can see, I had to manually break this URL at each line, otherwise it would have completely broken the Pain in the Tech layout!

Not only that, but how much of this URL is understandable? Let’s break down the parts:

1. http://www.amazon.com/
2. MySQL-Developers-Library-Paul-DuBois/
3. dp/0672326736/sr=8-1/qid=1159210873/ref=pd_bbs_1/
4. 104-2647715-9206340?ie=UTF8&s=books

I can understand the first two. However, 3 and 4 are completely indecipherable. They are just random numbers and letters to me.

What if I wanted to use my own site as a reference to this URL?

With Sidepath, I can:

http://paininthetech.com/go/books/mysql-developers-library

Isn’t that more intuitive? We can make it as intuitive as we want, by adding even more details:

http://paininthetech.com/go/books/paul-dubois/ mysql-developers-library/3rd-edition/march-2005

This URL will automatically redirect to the long, indecipherable Amazon URL. The nice part is - creating such a redirect is a breeze - prior programming experience is not required.

You may be wondering how useful this is, noting the second Sidepath URL from above is almost as long as the original Amazon one!

True, but look at how much more information is contained within it. By just glancing at it, we can immediately decipher the author, book title, edition, and publication date, without having to even visit the site.

If you’d rather send your link via SMS, you can shorten it down considerably, knowing that it’s a pain to type on mobile devices:

paininthetech.com/go/1

That’s all you need - the end viewer can quickly type this into a web browser.

In the end, you must decide what’s more important for each scenario: an understandable URL, or a short URL. Both are possible with Sidepath.

Setting it up

Sidepath is different from TinyUrl, in that it is a stand-alone application that runs on your web server, along with your web site. Your web server must be a LAMP architecture.

Sidepath can be purchased for approximately $11.00.

Setup and installation takes only a few minutes, but you must be comfortable with editing raw PHP code. You must also have an available MySQL database, to use with Sidepath. You should also be familiar with using an FTP editor, to upload the files to your server.

Once you get it set up, creating your first “re-direct” is a breeze!

The interface is clean and easy-to-use:

The Sidepath interface is clean and intuitive

Again, no prior programming knowledge is needed after setup.

Tips and tricks

You may find creating re-directs is rather straight-forward and can also be fun!

Using any words you can imagine, you can come up with formal and intuitive URL’s.

I find it useful to create a “hierarchy” or “structure” for my URL’s.

For example, if you are linking to a book, at Amazon, precede your URL with the word books:

paininthetech.com/go/books/book-name

This will help you “virtually organize” your URL’s.

Also, you’ll notice the word go in the URL above, and with all of the previous Sidepath URL examples in this article.

“go” is the keyword that triggers the Sidepath application to run. When setting up Sidepath, you have a choice of using either “go” or “links.”

This means that all of your “custom re-directs” must be preceded with “go” or “links.”

This is not such a bad thing. I got used to it rather quickly.

If you’re the “adventurous type,” you can attempt to use Sidepath at the top-level of your domain. This blog article explains how to set that up.

Summary

Sidepath makes sharing links very fun and intuitive. No longer are we limited by long, confusing URL’s. Now, we can make our own custom re-directs, right from our own web site!