EZR.me - URL Shortener

[Fragma]

http://ezr.me/img/EZR.png (http://ezr.me)

EZR is a new project that I've decided to set up. The main purpose being to make URL's "E-Z-R" to remember, use & share across the internet.

It's still in its early stages, and I do plan on totally redesigning the layout at some point, however I would like some feedback on how it looks so far.

Link: http://www.ezr.me

Cheers!

[Adam]

Excellent name but not a good TLD and it's not an original concept but good luck with it.

[QuotePort]

I like it, with a decent design I think that it could do well.

If you'd like help with a design, just let me know.

[Fragma]

Excellent name but not a good TLD and it's not an original concept but good luck with it.

Why is it not a good TLD? It needed to be 2 digits to keep it as short as possible. .me is just as good as any other 2 digit TLD.

[Adam]

.me is not as good as any other TLD unfortunately. You'll find your traffic limited.

You really should look at securing the .com TLD. It will cost but it'll repay itself in the long run.

[QuotePort]

.me is not as good as any other TLD unfortunately. You'll find your traffic limited.

You really should look at securing the .com TLD. It will cost but it'll repay itself in the long run.

I disagree, adf.ly and bit.ly are massively popular and neither own the .com

[Adam]

Because they have the might of an excellent affiliation programme behind them.

I'm only trying to help the guy get into a market that's already populated beyond belief. If it was something like link.me or shorten.me then yeah, fair enough but it isn't.

[Fragma]

Because they have the might of an excellent affiliation programme behind them.

I'm only trying to help the guy get into a market that's already populated beyond belief. If it was something like link.me or shorten.me then yeah, fair enough but it isn't.

A websites TLD does not affect it's SEO. Having a .com does not mean I'll get a higher SERP.
The only benefit of having a .com extension would be for its popularity.
What matters is how you brand your website, and getting as many quality backlinks as possible.

---------- Post added 01-09-2011 at 05:59 PM ----------


I disagree, adf.ly and bit.ly are massively popular and neither own the .com

bit.ly are now using bitly.com however as I said above it's purely down to the popularity of the extension. They still shorten their links with the bit.ly domain.

For now I'm going to stick with ezr.me. If my site gains a lot of popularity then perhaps in the future I will consider purchasing a .com domain for it.

[Adam]

I agree completely with having the shortened TLD however, if you say to someone who isn't a technologically literate as we, that your site is called ezr.me they'll still probably type ezr.com because that's pretty much all they know. .com and .co.uk

It's a universal domain that every knows because we're still in the .com world. It's called that for a reason and yes it's the most popular and surely that's a good enough reason to get one registered? It'd probably be better for you in the long run to have both.

[Fragma]

I agree completely with having the shortened TLD however, if you say to someone who isn't a technologically literate as we, that your site is called ezr.me they'll still probably type ezr.com because that's pretty much all they know. .com and .co.uk

It's a universal domain that every knows because we're still in the .com world. It's called that for a reason and yes it's the most popular and surely that's a good enough reason to get one registered? It'd probably be better for you in the long run to have both.

To be honest, I don't think the .me extension is particularly hard to remember. As I said before it's probably something worth thinking about in the future, but currently I don't see any need to seek out buying the .com domain, which, by the way, won't be a cheap purchase.

Thank you for the suggestion though.

[hamheyelliot]

I think the .me domain is perfectly justified. Anybody who knows the slightest thing about shortening URLs will know that a short domain is part and parcel.

I really like the domain, you wont exactly find yourself too high up in search engines because the other shorteners are already so established, but you stand a chance by making good use of Twitter sharing etc. to help it spread into a close knit community of users who like EZR as a name.

With these kinds of sites, it's good to find a niche such as 'Shorten your YouTube links', maybe with 'easier' as a name you could encourage people to use it to shorten their social links, then the domain could mean 'Easier to find me'. Just an idea of how you could target specific people.

Best of luck with it, it's a lovely short domain and doesn't need a .com counterpart to work out for you.

[Fragma]

Cheers Elliot.

Any further feedback on this? :)

[Casio]

Nice script you used, can be viewed easily :)

[Fragma]

Nice script you used, can be viewed easily :)

Thanks!
I've just added an reCAPTCHA as well, as their were a few people spamming it.
Also working on a nice little template for it now in Photoshop. :)

[hamheyelliot]

Consider this (http://codecanyon.net/item/nomouse-url-shortener-with-api-and-bookmarklet/405867) badboy if you ever have the equivalent of 8 bucks to spare :P

[Fragma]

Any further comments guys?

[Recursion]

Nothing wrong with the .me TLD. Nice URL, good luck :)

[Fragma]

Thanks Recursion.

I'm currently in the process of coding a full custom script, so that it will be made 100% by myself. So far I've coded the basic registration & login system, and I have the basic URL shortening function down pretty well.. I plan on adding the following features to it in the future:

- profiles handling system
- AJAX interface
- API to create short URLs for remote services
- bulk URL shortening
- password-protected URLs
- temporary URLs (valid till certain date)
- custom tags for bulk URLs (automatically assigned tags like tag1, tag2, tag3 and so on)
- advanced URL statistics for registered users
- registered users can edit/delete URLs

I will also add a quick share feature, which will make sharing your links to the big social networking sites easier than ever.

This will probably take a month or 2 at least to complete, but it should be worth it I think!