# Replacing shortened URLs by original

**URL:** <https://meta.discourse.org/t/replacing-shortened-urls-by-original/33797>\
**Category:** Feature\
**Created:** [2015年九月27日 16:17 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/replacing-shortened-urls-by-original/33797 "2015-09-27T16:17:55Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![CamilleRoux](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/camilleroux/32/119575_2.png) [@CamilleRoux](https://meta.discourse.org/u/CamilleRoux)\
**Post date:** [2015年九月27日 16:17 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/replacing-shortened-urls-by-original/33797/1 "2015-09-27T16:17:55Z")

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Hi,

On my forum, members are frequently using short URLs in their posts ([t.co](http://t.co), bit.ly…). I think it’s a problem for some reasons:

- Readers can’t see the real URL
- The clicks counter is reseted when an admin replace the short URL by the real one
- It’s frequently associated to spam (some URL shortener allow to change URL)
- It’s also frequently associated to self-promotion (they are using shorteners to track clicks)

What do you think about replacing automatically short URL by the original?

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**Author:** ![Yuun](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/977dab/32.png) [@Yuun](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Yuun)\
**Post date:** [2015年九月27日 16:36 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/replacing-shortened-urls-by-original/33797/2 "2015-09-27T16:36:16Z")

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I don’t know if it’d be any _easier_, but it’d at least be less circuitous if the option to manually ban certain URLs was available.

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**Author:** ![Mittineague](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/mittineague/32/114259_2.png) [@Mittineague](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Mittineague)\
**Post date:** [2015年九月27日 17:47 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/replacing-shortened-urls-by-original/33797/3 "2015-09-27T17:47:00Z")

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In our forum, besides the SPAM and self-promotion reasons for using shortened URLs, there are two legitimate reasons eg.

“I am working on a client’s site \_\_\_\_\_\_ and I can’t get the CSS right, please help”  
Where the dev wants the client to not find out they were asking for help.

“I posted an example page on my website here \_\_\_\_\_\_”  
Where the poster doesn’t want Not Founds to appear in their logs after the temporary page has been removed and would prefer to not need to constantly update their htaccess file.

So replacing them automatically all the time in our use case would not be a good thing.

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**Author:** ![CamilleRoux](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/camilleroux/32/119575_2.png) [@CamilleRoux](https://meta.discourse.org/u/CamilleRoux)\
**Post date:** [2015年九月27日 21:27 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/replacing-shortened-urls-by-original/33797/4 "2015-09-27T21:27:19Z")

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Interesting point of view… So if we do this, we should make it optionnal

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**Author:** ![chapoi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/chapoi/32/537252_2.png) [@chapoi](https://meta.discourse.org/u/chapoi)\
**Post date:** [2025年十二月4日 11:37 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/replacing-shortened-urls-by-original/33797/5 "2025-12-04T11:37:01Z")

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