Shorturl Service
Although its already available since a few days I am going to post some more details about the shorturl Service here.
The service ( http://imvu.at) only contains redirection links to imvu related sites. This could be a deeplink inside imvu itself, a group link for example. Moreover, if you think your private page is imvu related you can apply for whitelisting your domain. This makes sure that the redirection service is only used for sites that are from imvu or related to. Please note that freehost forums probably will not be added to the whitelist as their domainname is given to other forums as well and therfor they are not unique anymore and hardly to identify.
When adding your domain name you have to enter your avatarname (and validate it through imvu’s openid provider) to give me a way to get in contact with you.
For those who still dont know what I am writing about, check this example out: Lets say you want to make a banner code and decide to add a link to your group which for example is the IMVU CODES Group ( http://imvu.com/groups/group/IMVU%2BCODES). Actually, this is already a short example, there are even longer links because of longer group names.
For sometimes strange reason your code might get broken because of a space inside the link and/or the incorrect usage of the banner code. Since the groups are related to imvu you could go on http://imvu.at and paste the url inside the textbox there. By clicking the triangle at the right you create a shorturl, which is in this case: http://imvu.at/imVrk
When you follow the new url you will be redirected to the targeted group page.
This link doesnt include any problematic characters and is kept kind of short. In this version it also has a prefix which shows that this link is a deep link into the website of imvu.com (the first two letters of imVrk means IMvu). Prefixes will only be given to one page and cannot be used multiple times. Avatar pages for example have the prefix av (when using avatars.imvu.com as domain).
This page is still in a kind of beta stage but should work fine as long as your page is approved. If you enter an unapproved link a application form will appear that allows you to submit the request to have the certain domain applied.
Especially this is usefull for long group names or deeplinks inside the forum. At the moment there is no limitation in timelife of such shorturls and this is not planned anyways at the moment. Suggestions, ideas? Comment!