Ed Bott, the author of an excellent Windows tips blog I subscribe to, had a request today. He wanted a “Simple / Short URL” system he could use to create permanent links for the book he’s publishing. Rather than risking dead URLs as soon as the book is published, he wanted a dynamic system that would allow him to link to one place and then go back and update any dead links in the future.

You can read his entire post here.

Welp, I thought this was an interesting idea. Since I had never heard of a pre-packaged system for providing this functionality, I thought I’d help him (and possibly others) out… I wrote one myself using PHP and MySQL.

If you’re looking for a similar system, or just want to look at my code, check out the system and source code at http://dacnomm.com/simpleurl/!