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"I was always fixated with URL shorteners and always wanted to write one myself. While it would be easy to write one that works with a server, I loved the idea
by rsync 6y ago
"I was always fixated with URL shorteners and always wanted to write one myself. While it would be easy to write one that works with a server, I loved the idea of hosting and running one for free."
I felt exactly the same way and did, in fact, build one.[1]
It was pretty simple. There's an interesting twist to the particular one I built - it's not specifically a URL shortener, it's a "Universal Shortener".[2] Also no tracking or cookies or third party connections, which I find pleasing.
The disappointing part is seeing the malicious spam and phishing URLs that get shortened. We have had to manually flag-hold-approve a lot of strings and IIRC we outright block anything with 'paypal' in it.
We also gave a kill-function to our upstream ISP so that they could immediately act on phishing complaints without our having to be involved in real-time.
[1] https://0x.co https://0x.co
[2] https://0x.co/hnfaq.html https://0x.co/hnfaq.html
- nelsontky 6y agoOh that is cool! It does remind me of https://telegra.ph/ https://telegra.ph/ by Telegram! (Even though they weren't really advertising it as a universal shortener). Just a quick question, how did you promote your platform!
- rsync 6y agoI've done almost nothing to promote it. I just mention it once in a while (like now) when the topic of shorteners comes up. I also sent a notice to all rsync.net customers, years ago, when we launched it. That's it.
- ValentineC 6y agoSince we're on HN, and this isn't addressed in either FAQ: did anyone end up paying for custom codes?
- rsync 6y agoYes! People do, in fact, buy codes. I've spent almost zero time on "Oh By" in the last 24 months as things at rsync.net have been very busy. So, we haven't made a sale in months due to lack of publicizing it. However, I think there are unknown, emergent use-cases out there for "Oh By" that I hope people will discover. I am going to pivot back to "Oh By" next year ...
- bryogenic 6y agoWhat does the "searchable" option mean? I couldn't find anything about it in the faqs.
- rsync 6y agoWe're going to make an index page with links on it that cascade down to every code that is published and marked "searchable". Then google can just find that index page and index every link on it - and all codes marked searchable will be indexed by google.
- voltagex_ 6y agoBlocked under the phishing category by my corporate proxy, FYI.
- LeoPanthera 6y agoMy biggest problem with this is the domain name. If you say "oh by", a vanishingly small amount of people will translate this to "0x". And you can't say "oh ex dot co", because the URL has both a 0 and a O in it - which will also always be ambiguous when written down. So you have to say something like "zero ex dot co", which I suppose is fine, but it has a lot of extra syllables.