Everyone who microblogs on Twitter and the like knows about tinyURL, snipurl, bit.ly etc etc, services that take a long web link and crush it down to something…short. However, if you’re posting a link to twitter and using one of those services, you lose the caché of displaying your domain in your tweet:

http://www.sciencetext.com/shorten-your-linksshorten-your-links.html

becomes the anonymous:

http://tinyurl.com/68ptn4

In steps “Short URL”, a plugin for WordPress users that allows you to create shorter links that retain your domain name. It also lets you keep track of how many times a particular link was clicked. It’s useful for managing downloads, keeping track of outbound links and for masking links.

Grab it here. Thanks to the inimitable Darren Rowse on Twitip for the heads-up on this one.

It works best if your original link is in the root of the domain and it seems that you cannot give the link a keyword label, so maybe not quite as useful as it at first appears…