| ACADEMIC COMPUTING and COMMUNICATIONS CENTER | |||||||||
Short URLs | ||||||||||||
| Why Make a Short URL? | ||||||||||||
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You want a popular Web site? There are only three really important criteria:
Most people follow links, or find pages in search engines. And, once found, they bookmark the URL. For these people, it doesn't matter at all what the URL is. However, if you plan on advertising your URL in conventional media, such as print or TV, it's easier to advertise a short URL. If this is the case for you, read on. |
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| Files and URLs | ||||||||||||
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Each URL ultimately corresponds to a certain file on a certain server. The logical relationship between URLs is given by links on one or more pages. This is really independent from the physical relationship between files on a server, usually given by a hierarchical directory structure. Use the directory structure to help the page maintainer deal with files; use the link structure to help your users navigate your Web files. Understand the difference. In particular, we use directories to manage files from everybody's Web pages on tigger and icarus. We don't create arbitrary URLs because they really aren't needed, and because it would interfere with our directory structure. |
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| Anatomy of a URL | ||||||||||||
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A simple URL (missing a few optional parts) has the form: protocol://machine/path/file
Two ways to shorten the URL are:
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| Filename Defaults | ||||||||||||
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The file part of the URL is actually optional. If it is missing, tigger or icarus will check for any files named index.html, index.htm or index.asis. So all you have to do is give your file one of the default filenames, and you don't need the file part of the URL. For example, http://www.uic.edu/ really gets you http://www.uic.edu/index.html |
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| Domain Name Service (DNS) | ||||||||||||
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If filename defaults aren't good enough, your other choice is a CNAME. This means you want something like http://my.pages.uic.edu/ to send people to your real Web page at http://www.uic.edu/very/long/path/to/file.html This can be done, but is a little complicated and there are a number of restrictions.
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| Creating a CNAME | ||||||||||||
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Domain names are things like tigger.cc.uic.edu that ultimately get translated into IP addresses for network access. A CNAME is just a secondary name that resolves to an existing machine. However, it lives in the same name space as all machine names. To manage this name space, we need to impose some restrictions on what new names are allowed.
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| Making a CNAME Request | ||||||||||||
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The DNS name of your current machine is: If you are in your office, this very likely uses the existing zone for your department. If you aren't sure about what zone is appropriate, send a note anyway, and Networks will tell you what they can do for you. When you are ready to request a CNAME, send email to: wwwtech@uic.edu. Be sure to include the following information:
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| URL Redirection | ||||||||||||
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Getting a CNAME assigned is almost enough. The last step is to get the CNAME URL redirected to the real URL. Normally, we'll take care of this internally. But, if your CNAME gets assigned and the new URL doesn't go to your old page, send a note to wwwtech@uic.edu. |
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| Limitations | ||||||||||||
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Be aware that redirection using the CNAME will not work with ssl, i.e., with https:// URLs. If you need encryption or Bluestem for security, you won't be able to construct URLs of the form http://CNAME/.... This is not a major deal, becuase the URLs of the form https://www.uic.edu/... will still work for your site. You just have to be careful to use www.uic.edu for URLs that point back to your site, even if you advertise your main page at http://CNAME/. |
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| 2006-8-10 wwwtech |
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