Short Url's

[twjolson & Kay]

I found myself wanting to put a link to a cache somewhere, but couldn't because the URL in the address bar was longer then worth typing in. I was thinking if GC.com has short URL's for referancing caches. I don't know all the mechanism behind it, but the URL would become:

www.geocaching.com/GCM123

with GCM123 the waypoint handed out during a caches listing.

I suppose instead of rewriting all the coding, you could just write a redirector program, which might add to the URL, but would still make it much better then the ultra long urls now.

I have not seen this feature on GC.com, so forgive me if it already exists.

[+HHL]

try this:

http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?WP=gc1234

happy hunting.

[+rldill]

I use tinylink

 

It's not what you asked for but it is a work around.

[twjolson & Kay]

Thanks very much. I didn't know about the GC format, but that Tiny Link is a simple yet awesome idea I wish I had thought!!

 

Not to be a nitpicker, but I still wish they could shorten it more, geocaching.com/gc123 for example, much shorter then anything else.

[+Markwell]

I think that would be cool too, but I think the problem is the underlying structure of the website being a database not just a bunch of cache pages.

 

From an end-user standpoint it sounds GREAT. I just don't know if it's feasible.

[+Tzoid]

My favourite is http://snipurl.com/ which allows you to assign your own logical names to the generated short url's. A waypoint name is a valid logical name, so http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?WP=gc1234 can become http://snipurl.com/gc1234 Which is handy dandy.