Easier to remember URLs for Social Networking sites

Added on December 3rd, 2011

I guess one of the things that I miss in G+ (or maybe I just haven’t found it) are short URLs to your profile. Facebook has it, so you can get to my profile by entering facebook.com/rihards into your browser. Short and simple. So I wanted something like that for the other sites that I use (G+, Twitter, Flickr, etc.), but I wanted them to be consistent.

And what better way to do that than to use your own domain, and just set up some redirects? A little research into the difference between HTTP 301 and 307, this was born:

Redirect 307 /+ https://plus.google.com/u/0/114104365088835046723/posts
Redirect 307 /plus https://plus.google.com/u/0/114104365088835046723/posts
Redirect 307 /twitter https://twitter.com/#!/rihards
Redirect 307 /facebook https://www.facebook.com/rihards
Redirect 307 /flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/rihardss/

Just added that to my .htaccess file and it works like a charm!

If I want to have a look at my G+ profile I can just go to rihards.com/+ and it will take me there.

Now I (or anyone else for that matter) don’t have to remember the exact URL for any of my profiles (and I don’t have to log in to check). As long as I remember what the site is called I can tell people where to find me online.

And of course, I can add/remove/edit these as I please.

Operis and Owl & Cat

Added on June 30th, 2011

More updates to my Work page! Just added Operis and Owl & Cat. Both of which were great projects to work on. But then again, I’ve always enjoyed working on WordPress projects.

Some new things learnt as always while working on these, especially how underused WordPress shortcodes are. Quite extensive use of custom shortcodes on Operis site to make easier and less messy to update.

Got to play around with Big Cartel as well while working on Owl & Cat, and I must say I’m impressed. Easy to use, easy to theme up, and quite cheap (there’s even a free version) for a hosted e-commerce / online shop system.

BJJW Limited

Added on May 10th, 2011

Added a new project today to my portfolio / work section, BJJW Limited. BJJW Limited is a legal search and headhunting agency and they needed a new webpage. Once again I teamed up with Mark Dormand to produce an excellent, very clean and elegant webpage.

Things learned from this project? jQuery still rocks, it doesn’t always have to be an expensive and massive webpage with a CMS, sometimes a simple HTML site is exactly what you or the client needs, and html image maps still have their uses (check out the contact page on BJJW‘s webpage for that).

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