About
Yes, this is yet another URL shortener. But this one has a twist. It's a bit different and funny which helps to break your day up. It's also new, which means there are less URLs in the database which in turn means shorter URLs for everyone. Win.
System
ftw.gd was developed by Fivetwelve, a small web design & development studio based in Mid-Wales. The name was chosen because it obviously means "for the win" and also because it resembles three of the letters from FiveTWelve. Hey, who am I kidding - just for the win.
Platform
This system runs on a LAMP setup (obviously), running CentOS Linux, Apache, PHP and MySQL. It was hand crafted using the CodeIgniter framework.
Algorithm
Like many other URL shortening websites, this one uses a Base-62 type algorithm for shortening URLs. This means that there are 62 allowable characters for shortened URLs. These characters are a-z, A-Z and 0-9.
For every character in the shortened URL, there are 62 possible URLs that can be shortened. For each additional character, this grows exponentially to a base of 62. For example, for short URLs of the length of http://ftw.gd/aa, there are 62 * 62 = 3844 combinations, for http://ftw.gd/aaa, there are 62 * 62 * 62 = 238328 combinations and so on.
Source
Fivetwelve are committed to a transparent and open Internet, so we may shortly decide to release the source code to ftw.gd.
Can haz API?
K. If you're leet and you want an interface to our shortening system, head on over the API page.
Version in footer? wut?! Changel0g plex.
Fivetwelve are busy but will do our best to maintain and improve ftw.gd as it grows. We will maintain a change log which will be updated as and when features/bugs are addressed.