Redirecting Dolphin URL issues

so here's the dilemma..

I want to create 'short links' so users can use my sites main URL /groupname and go straight to the group.

At the moment, the URL for a group looks like this

http://www.mysite.com/m/groups/view/groupname

Same for a business name, an event or anything else but in its respective module link.

So, if I create a redirect using cpanel so if users type in 

www.mysite.com/groupname

it should redirect to 

http://www.mysite.com/m/groups/view/groupname

saving the user a long mouthful of a page link!

But it doesnt. Instead it tells me the user/page doesnt exist because Dolphin is looking for a site user...

Dolphins structure tells it that any URL.com/something... is in fact a user names 'something'.

Strange as even a redirect from cpanel will not redirect whereas on other sites it will...?

So how to fix this???

The long page links that Dolphin creates to access any group/event/business/classified etc directly is way too long and not great for marketing purposes.

Is there a simple way to be able to create short links that will link to the long link URLs?

Not possible.

If you shorten them that much there is no way to be able to tell the difference.

For example.

yoursite.com/profilename
yoursite.com/eventname
yoursite.com/groupname

As a human you would most likely be able to tell the difference just by looking at the name. But a computer cannot tell the difference. They are all profile urls in dolphins eyes.

You need to have something that tells dolphin what it is. For example, the m in most of the urls represents a module url.

You could do something like this.

yoursite.com/profilename
yoursite.com/group/groupname
yoursite.com/event/eventname

That is doable because there is something else in the url that the computer can use to identify what type of url it is. If they all look the same without something to identify it, then it will not be possible.

But if a URL shortening service can take any long URL and link it to a short URL, why cant the same be done here? 

Surely a server side shortening service could be used, creating a short link using the servers own domain, then redirect that to the long link?

I know someone put something here before about YOURLS that could do this?

I tried installing it but it wouldnt work alongside Dolphin, might just have been my setting it up wrong though..

Because a URL shortening service creates a short URL which redirects to the actual URL when accessed, and isn't on the same server of the actual URL, either.

You can try a redirect like http://groups.example.com/groupname, but what you are trying to accomplish (http://www.example.com/groupname) isn't possible (as deano said) by the design of the script.

MOD NEEDED!!! ;-)

MOD WON'T WORK!

They are right. What happens if you have a group and a user of the same name? Once you get 50,000 users, most, if not all, group names are going to be gone. You could build an href tag [a href'"http;//whatever.com/event/whatever"]http://whatever.com/whatever{/a]. That's the om;y way I see it being done.

In my case, only admin can create groups so double names isnt an issue.

Just need something that shortens the URLs as all the extensions make them far too long for example if putting one on a flyer etc...

Shame it cant be done easily.

You can shorten them

yoursite.com/g/groupname
yoursite.com/a/articalname

What your asking is to shorten them to the point where only a single thing appears after the domain name. That is simply not possible. There has to be at least one other unique item in the url that allows the software to know what kind of a url it is.

Then those url rewrites can be placed in dolphins .htaccess file.

I have a fealing your simply not understanding this.

Have you considered my suggestion above?

Edit: Deano also has some good alternatives.

 Thanks for this, what would I have to put in .htaccess to do the example below?

www.yoursite.com/m/groups/groupname

to

www.yoursite.com/g/groupname

Thanks 

Just before this rule in the .htaccess file.

RewriteRule ^m/(.*)$  modules/index.php?r=$1 [QSA,L]


Add this rule directly above it.

RewriteRule ^g/(.*)$  m/groups/view/$1 [QSA,L]

Being able to do this is really good for SEO of a site, especially with articles, groups, events etc. Very nice.