URL shortener policy; improving the user experience.

It's worth nothing that a Dropbox account (dropbox.com) is free and has 2 GB of space. Direct links to your files, no ads, and no wait time before download.

Also, my signature contains a referral link for an extra .25 GB of space. Just throwing that out there.

Yeah, I can see this. Adf.ly is actually quite horrible overall to generate any money for your plugins.
It requires 10,000 Visits usually for a couple of dollars, and it isn't really worth the advertisement they give.

I used to use adf.ly, and I earned USD $0.58 last month just to show a measly 5 second advertisement to some of the players. It's really nothing to be honest, and isn't worth it.

There are enough free services out there anyway. No need for other stuff, especially something like adf.ly

URL shorteners that direct people to inappropriate sites which bombard visitors with advertisements or malicious content, leaving a sour taste in their mouths.


that was funny lol

There are a few scripts that get the final destination address. Unfortunately there are too many shorteners to keep up with.

@EvilSeph
I use bit.ly to track how many times my plugin has been downloaded as it offers a good service for that. Is it still ok to use that?
I agree with banning adf.ly - I used it for a bit and made about $2. The adverts are annoying and it's not worth it..

I use bit.ly for the same reason is it ok?

I use dropbox It's always ok xD

I like using google code, you can deprecate versions and you get a cool download counter ^^

When you put a download on github you can also track how many downloads the file gets as well, as well as being wget compatible. I've had 1 or 2 people say that I should use adf.ly to link to the download, but, as EvilSeph said, I didn't do it because of the same reasons he mentioned.

Github isn't immediately wget compatible. You have to force it to ignore the certificate errors.

It doesn't matter which end the bug is on, nor does it even bother me. I was only stating that it wasn't as simple as wget <url>.

Nope

Does Dropbox impose a monthly bandwidth limit for hosting files in this manner? I can't check, I'm at the office and it's blocked...

Nice, that should be plenty.

Personally, out of the computers I fixed during my previous college year, most of the problems were people downloading and visiting sites. Sure that was common, but most of them were from short URL. Most of the people at my dorm are smart enough to hover their mouse over the links before clicking and glance at the URL that shows at the bottom of the screen. Even then, a short URL is unreliable because it doesn't say where you are really going to.

Any plugin I see that I want to download that uses a short URL I request a real link to the download, even if the text selected is a link.
I really distrust short URLs of any kind, even if they are google links.

Is Fill still planned?

I'm sure they are working on it in the background.

Unless you're tweeting, Short URLs do not belong on the internet. And even then, Twitter should have created a way for those characters not to count. I say good riddance.

The new update folder is a step in the right direction, and it sure is handy to not have to stop/start a dev server when making small changes to code.

Honestly Twitter has no place in a Broadband-standard Internet.

I hardly use twitter, only to receive updates on stuff like Notch and his team.
If twitter would force people to use one kind of short URL and have the ability to report the URLs, that would be great. At least when the URL is reported, it temporarily removed/replaced until someone can check it.

@Tux2 Thanks, I will start using github for this then.

lol but I guess you are registered on Facebook, aye? >.>

Technically. I have an account for my mom's cat. That's it.