Bitly's WordPress Plugin

Description

Love WordPress? Love Bitly? After installing this plugin, you’ll be able to shorten a link and view clicks right from WordPress. Your new links will be saved to Bitly for reference and deeper analysis.

To do that, you must have a Bitly account to use the plugin. Your account is where you store, edit, and view metrics for your links. Register at bitly.com.

No matter the type of site you own (from a personal blog to an ecommerce store and everything in between) Bitly makes it easy to create shorter links and keep an eye on your clicks. Whether you share your links on social, SMS, or email, a short link is easier to manage and remember.

Screenshots

Installation

Installing the plugin

You must have a Bitly account to connect to. You can create one at bitly.com. Your account is where you store, edit, and view metrics for your links.
If you’re familiar with adding a plugin to WordPress directly, you can download the ZIP file and upload it to /wp-content/plugins/ after step 2. Otherwise, follow these steps:
1. Go to your WordPress plugins settings.
2. Click Add New.
3. Search for Bitly’s WordPress Plugin.
4. Click Install Now.
5. Click Activate.
6. Scroll down the list of your installed plugins, find
Bitly, and click Settings.
7. Now you’ll connect the plugin to your Bitly account. Scroll down to Bitly’s WordPress Plugin and click Authorize.
8. Sign in to Bitly, if necessary, and click Allow. The plugin will retrieve an authorization from Bitly and update the Bitly OAuth Token field.
9. Scroll down and click Save Changes.
10. Select which types of entries you’ll be creating short links for.
11. If your Bitly account has more than one group, select a group. This is the group where your short links will be saved in Bitly.
12. If your Bitly account has more than one custom domain, select a domain. This is the domain that will be used for your short links.
13. Click Save Changes.

Now you can shorten links when you create a new post!

Creating a short link

After publishing a page or post, you’ll see the Bitly’s WordPress Plugin option in the settings. Click Get Shortlink to create a link to the current content. The link will be saved in your Bitly account, and you’ll be able to view the number of clicks it receives right from this setting.

Viewing a link’s click data

Click metrics for a short link will appear in the post’s or page’s settings. They include the number of clicks today, the total number clicks over time, and a graph of the number of clicks over the last 7 days.

FAQ

After installation, do I need to update all my posts for short links to be created?

No. The first time a short link is requested for a particular post, the plugin will automatically generate one.

Reviews

July 25, 2023
This plugin just no longer works and it starts to create critical errors with other plugins on the website. Seems it is no longer supported, developed, or recommended. Please remove from Wordpress Plugin directory.
March 9, 2022 1 reply
Just like the previous reviewer said: The plugin does not work. After clicking on the Authorize button, logging in to the bit.ly account and allowing access, the message ‘ERROR: Failed to retrieve access token.’ will be displayed. Btw, the whole service is like a bad joke. Documentation is practically non-existent, the WP plugin is not maintained and doesn’t work.
January 25, 2022
The plugin does not work. After clicking on the Authorize button, logging in to the bit.ly account and allowing access, the message ‘ERROR: Failed to retrieve access token.’ will be displayed.
September 5, 2021
ta mais que provado que é um site bom, as vezes temos que pedir para pessoas encurtar um link, uma TAG, ou uma campanha de publicidade, para mim está aprovado..
June 21, 2021
It’s taken me a while to understand the “generate short link” command does replace the plain vanilla wp.me short-link. Well done Bitly, glad to see you and my vanity url back in the console.
Read all 23 reviews

Contributors & Developers

“Bitly's WordPress Plugin” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.

Contributors

“Bitly's WordPress Plugin” has been translated into 4 locales. Thank you to the translators for their contributions.

Translate “Bitly's WordPress Plugin” into your language.

Interested in development?

Browse the code, check out the SVN repository, or subscribe to the development log by RSS.

Changelog

2.7.2

  • Security update.
  • Various additional minor fixes.

2.7.1

  • Updated to prevent short link generation when a post is viewed on the frontend, or edited (but not re-saved) on the backend.

2.7.0

  • Updated to prevent short link (re)generation when bulk-editing posts.
  • Added placeholder message to Bitly metabox when creating new post.
  • Fixed issue where “Default Organization” field displayed incorrect value after configuration change.
  • Various additional minor fixes.

2.6.0

  • Completely rebuilt for use with Bitly API version 4.

2.5.2

  • Fixes various php warnings produced by assuming $post
  • Better response handling for wpbitly_get()

2.5.0

  • Adds “Regenerate Shortlink” feature to pages and posts
  • Adds chart showing previous 7 days of activity

2.4.3

  • Adds debugging to authorization process
  • Adds manual entry of the OAuth token in case automatic authorization fails

2.4.1

  • Backwards compatible with PHP 5.2.4
  • Updates styling on settings page
  • Updates wp_generate_shortlink()
  • Adds debug setting back

2.4.0

  • Updated for use with WordPress 4.9.2 and current Bitly Oauth

2.3.2

  • Fixed a typo in wpbitly_shortlink

2.3.0

  • Trimmed excess bloat from wp_get_shortlink()
  • Tightened up error checking in wp_generate_shortlink()

2.2.6

  • Fixed bug where shortlinks were generated for any post type regardless of setting
  • Added save_post back, further testing needed

2.2.5

  • Added the ability to turn debugging on or off, to aid in tracking down issues
  • Updated to WordPress coding standards
  • Removed wpbitly_generate_shortlink() from save_post, as filtering pre_get_shortlink seems to be adequate
  • Temporarily removed admin bar shortlink button (sorry! it’s quirky)

2.2.3

  • Replaced internal use of cURL with wp_remote_get
  • Fixed a bug where the OAuth token wouldn’t update

2.0

  • Updated for WordPress 3.8.1
  • Updated Bitly API to V3

1.0.1

  • Fixed bad settings page link in plugin row meta on Manage Plugins page

1.0

  • Updated for WordPress 3.5
  • Removed all support for legacy backwards compatibility
  • Updated Settings API implementation
  • Moved settings from custom settings page to Settings -> Writing
  • Enabled shortlink generation for scheduled (future) posts
  • Added I18n support.

0.2.6

  • Added support for automatic generation of shortlinks when posts are viewed.

0.2.5

  • Added support for WordPress 3.0 shortlink API
  • Added support for custom post types.

0.1.0

  • Initial release of WP Bitly