Short Name URLs and Printing

You may have noticed, but we’ve recently added a couple of new pieces of functionality to OurEcho. Both were a direct result of Virginia Allain’s post Spreading the Word on OurEcho. She mentioned that she included a little note about OurEcho in her Christmas cards. She then mentioned how to go to tinyurl.com, so you could make a link with a shorter name. I am very appreciative of everyone’s help and would like to make sharing your stories as easy as possible. So, now you can make your short URL names right in OurEcho. It works for both your stories and your bio.

What is this URL we are talking about? It’s the Uniform Resource Locator, previously Universal Resource Locator. It’s the address at the top of the page that specifically identifies a page on the internet. www.ourecho.com is a URL. If you open one of your stories, you’ll see something like this - http://www.ourecho.com/story-704-Tell-me-a-Story-from-your-Childhood-.shtml. What the short URL allows me to do is make it something like this www.ourecho.com/childhood. The original address is still there, but the shortcut allows you to point to it in a simpler format. You can create these short URL when you edit or post a story and you can also create one for your bio by clicking on the “My Account” link at the top right part of the page when you are signed into your account.

So how does this help? I’m not sure it does when you are on the computer. Most people cut and paste URLs into emails and all you have to do is click on it. I’m not sure there is much advantage to it being short. Where it does help is when you are writing it down as Virginia was doing in her Christmas cards or trying to verbally tell something the address. Just look at the example above and you’ll see how much simpler it is.

When I posted a comment about what I was going to do, I did receive some feedback from Fred Wickert that he worried it might damage the community concept if everybody just came into the OurEcho looking for one specific link. It’s a valid concern and one I hadn’t considered. I’ll continue to watch how this plays out over the next few months and adjust if I need to. My goal is to make it easier to share your stories with others and I hope this feature furthers that objective.

On Virginia’s post, Fred Wickert also commented that he prints off his stories and passes them out. To make that easier, I have included a “print” option on the story page. If you click the link, it formats the story in a manner that is better suited to printing. The print format has an OurEcho banner (which will soon be our normal blue), the URL to your story (the URL short name if you have created one), your story and pictures, and a short blurb on OurEcho at the bottom. I’ve considered also attaching the writer’s bio at the bottom (let me know what you think).

I hope you find these pieces of functionality helpful in sharing your stories. I can’t promise I can always deliver on suggestions, but I’m always interested in hearing them.

Story ID:	1380
Written by:	OurEcho Admin (bio, link, contact, other stories)
Story type:	OurEcho Tips, Features and Info
Location:	Atlanta Ga USA
Year:	2006
Person:	Our Echo