Two days ago Roadrunner Records updated their news feed with a simple link to Killswitch Engage’s official website indicating that there was a new announcement.  Visitors to the site were surprised to find that there was no written announcement on the page…only a picture and links for Merch and Touring dates.  There was nothing new in the links.  The only thing new was a picture of all of the members of the band and….Jesse Leach.  That’s right, the original singer of KSE was back in the band.  Within no time Loudwire was already posting of Jesse’s return.  Today KSE has made an official announcement on their Facebook page which has been strangely silent about this the last couple of days (even though they were the first to break the news of Howard’s departure on that page).  One might assume that they wanted to give everyone a chance to look at the picture first…

If you run your own blog using WordPress software you probably already use pretty permalinks.  When posting links somewhere it’s easier and better to use a short code.  Did you know that you can use the default permalink as a URL shortener in WordPress even if you are using pretty permalinks?  Here’s how:  Every post has a unique post id.  You can find out the post id simply by looking at the link to edit the post (for authors, moderators, and admins).  Then you format the short code like this:  http://site.com/?p=x  where x is the post id number.

Example:

This blog is at

http://metalfire.com/url-shortening-wordpress/

and since the edit link ends in post=92 I know that the postid is 92 and therefore the shortcode would be:

http://metalfire.com/?p=92

Click on either and it will bring you to

http://metalfire.com/url-shortening-wordpress/

You want to use the short URL on sites like Twitter where you have a 140 character limit on posts.

Yes, it’s that simple!!!!