Find Out Where That Short Link Goes

Short links are for those of us who don’t like much typing or thumbing. Great invention, huh?

I mean, who really wants to take the time to type in a link like this — http://wildeherb.com/2014/08/21/blooming-anise-hyssop-attracts-bees-and-butterflies/ — with all the hyphens no less?

Short link services are plentiful on the Net and it’s no wonder. If you’re into Twitter, a link like the above one will use more than half a tweet with those 77 characters!

A more sensible link — http://bit.ly/29fpAhq — of only 14 characters will take you to that Blooming Anise Hyssop post.

Popular URL shortening services are available at bitly.com, TinyURL.com or Goo.gl, just to name the most popular ones. There are tons of other services out there with extra features like tracking how many clicks your links are getting.

My issue with using short links is, “How do you know where that little link will take you?”

Is it safe? Can it be trusted?

Find out before you go there by using an un-shortening or link expansion service like Untiny.

I just checked and my bit.ly link above was properly extracted to the original long, hairy link.

Untiny.me, an even greater invention!

WWW Subdomain Makes The FQDN

Using WWW or no-WWW for web addresses sure seems to be a personal preference. I prefer to not use the www to keep things simple. Less to type, yah?

But, by leaving off the “www” in typing in a webpage address, we’re having to make an assumption or rather your browser has to figure something out. What’s the host?

Other people can’t seem to find a website unless they use the www — like they think it’s mandatory to use it. But, when there’s a different subdomain, like mail or demo, the www usually isn’t warranted.

So, what the heck is FQDN and why do we need it? It’s a question that may pop up when you’re about to install some “goody” on your website.

FQDN? It stands for Fully Qualified Domain Name which is to say a complete domain name or an absolute domain name.

FQDNs require a hostname plus a domain name.

The domain name is the web address you purchase, like sitepoint.com or wordpress.org.

The hostname is the prefix or subdomain for a web address, like www or mail or demo.

Splicing the hostname to the domain name gives one the FQDN.

Examples of fully qualified domain names:

  • www.ebay.com
  • mail.ark.edu
  • demo.oba.net

The domain bbc.com isn’t complete because we don’t know the hostname. Granted, most browsers and people will assume the hostname to be ‘www’, but you know what they say about assuming anything. 🙁

When specifying a FQDN we lose the ambiguity because the exact webpage location has been spelled out. There’s no guessing involved and that’s a good thing.

When installing a package on your server or computer you might be asked for the FQDN and now you know what that means!

The Main Points: Using a FQDN is the same thing as specifying a complete web address. FQDNs consist of a hostname plus domain name. A hostname is often assumed to be ‘www’ but it can also be the name of a server, like ‘mail’, or another subdomain like ‘demo’.

Updated Method to Create WordPress Child Themes

Twenty Ten Child Theme Mods

Once upon a time all that a WordPress Child Theme needed was to use an @import rule to bring in all the styles from the parent theme stylesheet. Evidently, that method still works as I’ve been using a couple of “old” child themes on live sites, until now.

Even so, it would be better to use updated and preferred methods for creating WP child themes. When The Codex says something is no longer best practice, we should pay attention.

Using @import to bring in other files costs us time. Nobody appreciates a slow site so any way that we can speed things up for our visitors is a good thing.

The correct method of enqueuing the parent theme stylesheet is to add a wp_enqueue_scripts action and use wp_enqueue_style() in your child theme’s functions.php.

A child theme requires one file, style.css, declarations in which will override those of the parent theme, but now we need a second file, called functions.php, to enqueue the new stylesheet. Continue reading Updated Method to Create WordPress Child Themes