My New Domain pape.rs for Short Links is Live

Tuesday, 09 February 2010 | by Pat's Picks

Thanks to Serbia, I am the master of my shortened domain.

I create a lot of short web links. I mostly use them to share stories on Twitter, where the 140 character limit compels you to use a link shortening service. I started out using tinyurl.com a lot. I dabbled in is.gd. And then I settled on bit.ly because it delivers great statistics and the ability to customize the short URL with something clever.

But I longed for my own short domain name. PatsPapers.com isn’t outrageously long, but 14 characters is a tenth of the total Twitter message allotment, so I was looking for something shorter. I found the answer in Serbia, which adminsters the .rs domains.

To cut my link footprint from 14 characters to 7 required a relationship with a Serbian hosting company. Through StanCo I was able to secure the open “pape” domain name for Serbia, which gives me the sexy custom domain “pape.rs” to use as I see fit.

I’m more excited about this than I ought to be, because there’s no functional change in the way the short links operate. But now I have fun links like http://pape.rs/DaveSWIM on the Sports Illustrated swimsuit story, or http://pape.rs/notLUGE on yesterday’s shovel racing page. (And note that the custom link to this page is a head-spinning http://pape.rs/papeRS)

I’m not the first to launch a custom short domain. There are various services and downloads available to make it happen. But I didn’t really want to mess around with installing scripts on a domain of my own. It seemed too complicated and sure to fail at a key moment. But then I noticed that bit.ly was about to Beta test a “white label” version of its service called bit.ly pro.  So, I signed up and got the go-ahead on the weekend to connect pape.rs. I still get my familiar bit.ly statistics and custom URL option. But now the domain is all mine.

More about bit.ly pro