So Synected has been out for nearly a week now and feedback has been rolling in. I’ve taken some of the feature suggestions (and bug reports) and incorporated them into a new version. Here’s a quick rundown:

Support for short URLs with no prefix.

Originally, I didn’t think this was possible - but as it turns out, I simply hadn’t given it enough thought. This new mode allows you to use your domain directly, the same way the third-party services do. So instead of http://blurbia.com/u/j7, it can be just http://blurbia.com/j7. Now for the caveat: this is an experimental mode that could even be considered dangerous. Suppose you have a Wordpress page with a slug of “j7″? Suppose you have a short URL of “4378″ - would this go to your Synected link, or to the Wordpress archives for the year 4378? If you add plugins that modify permalinks into the mix, it gets even messier. For now, I’d say only use this mode if you’re feeling adventurous, or if you want to help with testing and development of Synected. And backup your .htaccess file first!

Support for short URLs without permalinks.

Now you can use Synected even if your web host doesn’t support permalinks. URLs take the form http://blurbia.com/?u=j7. It may not be as pretty, but it will be shortened - and of course the ‘u’ is customizable.

URL format history

Synected now keeps track of your URL prefix and suffix history, and keeps them active. If you were using http://blurbia.com/u/j7, and decide to switch to http://blurbia.com/~j7, your “u/” prefix will still work. You don’t have to worry about links you already sent out being broken. What’s more, there is a new management screen–”Legacy Formats” under the “Short URLs” menu–so you can see which formats are still active, and delete the ones you no longer need.

This release also includes a bugfix for an issue that prevented some of the options from being correctly saved. As always, be sure to let us know of any problems you run into, and any new features you’d like to see. Grab the updated plugin here.