On Fri, Apr 1, 2011 at 07:14, Yuvi Panda <yuvipanda@gmail.com> wrote:
After talking with Srikanth for a bit more, I was able to quickly
hackup this mediawiki extension[1] that does exactly the same thing
tawp.in does now, but in the same domain. So you'll have URLs like
http://ta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:ShortUrl/262. While definitely
longer than http://tawp.in/r/262, it can be made much shorter via a
simple apache mod_rewrite so http://ta.wikipedia.org/r/262 also works.
The advantage of having it as an extension is, ofcourse, that the
wikipedia is no longer dependent on code run on a 3rd party server (in
this case, tawp.in).

[1]: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:ShortUrl

Now that is *really quick*. It would definitely be useful for not just wikipedia, any non latin mediawiki can use this.There was a request on tamil wikipedia for tamil wikinews as well. I think polishing this and making it available on all non latin wiki will help :) 
 
Feedback welcome :)

Feedback from mediawiki extn perspective : Options to set the "ShortURL" to be displayed on client side will help. For instance I could install this on mediawiki server, but for shortname sake I may still want the short domain name to be used (I might use mod_rewrite in the short domain). Also base 36 will not be able to cater larger wiki's like en.wiki. This should be made configurable. Probably the simplest way to display in client side is to add a line to Toolbox page. (This will make it "standardized") and also makes it load faster since there wont be an additional js download and will work even when non js browsers. ( #facepalm to me for having spent a long time trying to bring it on right spot on the UI [and still its buggy on FA pages])  

Please post to Wikitech-I to get more technical feedback :) 


P.S. My first ever mediawiki extension. I've verified it works, but
testing would be welcome too :)

Welcome to Mediawiki. We need more love from geeks like you :) especially for a lot of indic solutions. Feel free to mail this list with any ideas you may have.


Regards
Srikanth.L
http://srik.me