You may have considered using a branded short URL if you’re running a blog. These URLs are simple to remember and help increase your brand’s user recognition. In this post, we’ll show you how easy it is to generate short URLs for your blog using we beg.in.

Why Use a Customized Short URL with Your Brand in WordPress?

Many popular websites, such as The New York Times, Twitter, Facebook, and TechCrunch, all use branded short URLs on social media. For example, The New York Times uses nyti.ms, TechCrunch uses tcrn.ch, and WPBeginner uses wpbeg.in. These types of domain names are known as domain hacks, which are created by combining the brand name with a domain TLD to spell a brand name creatively.

Using a personalized short URL has several benefits. It increases user recognition of your brand, makes it easier to construct URLs to share on social networks, and allows you to monitor the number of hits you receive after sharing a URL.

Purchase a short domain name or URL as the first step.

You’ll need to purchase a short domain name or URL to generate a brand-specific short URL in WordPress. Most people don’t use a short URL as their primary domain name, so you’ll need to register a new domain much shorter than your current domain.

For example, when registering a shorter domain for WPBeginner.com, we chose WPBeg.in, resulting in a short URL six letters shorter than our main domain. Several free domain name generators can help you find a suitable short domain name.

Configure Your Domain in Bitly

Once you’ve registered your short domain name, you’ll need to configure it in Bitly. Bitly is a popular URL-shortening tool that allows you to manage and track links. To set up your short URL in Bitly, you’ll need to create an account, add your short domain name to the settings, and configure your DNS A records to point to Bitly servers.

Point the DNS A Record to bit.ly

Look for DNS records in the domain control section of your domain registrar’s website. If you follow our recommendation and register your domain with GoDaddy, it will be shown under Domains.

Add the copied IP addresses from the Bitly website as A entries in DNS.

If you are utilizing a subdomain such as on.wsj.com, you must create a CNAME record pointing to cname.bitly.com.

Once DNS records have been added, you may return to the Bitly website and click the verify option. Retry after a few hours if an issue occurs.

Setup a Short URL for Your WordPress Website

The biggest feature of Bitly is that you can manage, distribute, and monitor your short URLs from your WordPress site.

The first step is to install and activate the WP Bitly plugin. Refer to our step-by-step tutorial for further information on installing a WordPress plugin.

Visit the Settings » Writing page and scroll down to the ‘WP Bitly Options’ section after activation.

Here, you’ll customize the plugin settings and link Bitly to your WordPress website.

It would be best if you first supplied an access token. Visit your Bitly account and go to Settings > Advanced Settings. At the bottom of the menu is a link to OAuth applications.

This will redirect you to a new page where you must enter your Bitly password before clicking the Generate button.

Bitly will produce an access token on your behalf. It must be copied and pasted into your WordPress site’s settings page for the plugin.

Don’t forget to click the save settings button to preserve your preferences.

The plugin will now begin creating short URLs with your personalized branding. You may access them using your Bitly dashboard.

The WP-Bitly plugin also displays BitLy statistics for each post. To see these statistics, edit a post and look for the WP Bitly meta box.

In conclusion, using a branded short URL can help increase your brand’s user recognition and make it easier to share links on social media. By following the steps outlined in this post, you’ll be able to generate a short URL for your WordPress blog using wpbeg.in.