What is TinyUGA?

TinyUGA is a URL shortening service provided to the University of Georgia community for shortening links anywhere in the uga.edu domain.

What do TinyUGA links look like?

All links generated by TinyUGA will start with http://t.uga.edu.

Why use a URL shortener?

Using a URL shortener helps you share links by making them less obtrusive, keeping them within the strict character count limits used by certain websites (e.g. Twitter), and providing statistics on the amount of activity your links are getting.

Why use TinyUGA?

A common criticism of URL shorteners is that it is often difficult for the user to know where a shortened link will take him or her. This makes it possible to use URL shorteners to trick users into visiting malicious websites. Because TinyUGA can only be used to link to pages in the uga.edu domain, users do not have to worry about being taken to malicious websites when clicking links from TinyUGA.

Should I log in?

Links made while you are logged in are "private", while links made while not logged in are "public". Public links are recycled: if you create a link to a page that someone else has already created a link to, you'll simply be given the existing link. This means that when you view the link's stats, you won't be able to tell how many of the clicks were generated by you, and how many were generated by others who may have shared the link. Furthermore, public links cannot be changed once created: they will always point to the URL that they pointed to when first made.

Private links are "owned" by the user who creates them. When creating a private link, a new link will be generated even if there already exists a public link, or another user's private link, for the same URL. This means that when viewing the link's statistics, you'll know that all the clicks came from the link that you created. Furthermore, private links can be changed by the owner at any time. This means that if you create a link to a page on your website, and that page later changes it's location, you can simply update the TinyUGA link to point to the new location.

How do I view statistics about my link?

You can view stats on any TinyUGA link simply by adding "+" to the end of the link. For example, by changing http://t.uga.edu/g4s to http://t.uga.edu/g4s+.

Is there an easy way to make TinyUGA links on the go?

When browsing any UGA website, you can instantly make a TinyUGA link to whatever page you're viewing using a special bookmark. Find out about the TinyUGA Bookmarklet.