This option will shorten your links when people share your content on Twitter. You’ll need to connect to a Bitly account (it’s free) to take advantage of this feature. Social Warfare will use your custom short domain if you have one configured in your Bitly account, but if not, it will use the standard bit.ly links.
Link-Shortening
This is the on/off toggle used to activate or deactivate all link-shortening functions. Once this is turned on, you will see various other options come into view, allowing you to customize the link-shortening behavior throughout your site.
Minimum Publish Date (v4.0)
Entering a date into this field will allow you to control which posts receive shortened links. Any posts published prior to the date entered in this field will not get shortened links. Only posts published after this date will get shortlinks.
This was designed because activating link-shortening on a site with thousands of articles can cause the API to create many, many links as the plugin works to populate shortlinks on all of your articles. As such, you can enter a date into this field to reduce the number of articles that need links.
Link-Shortening Service (v4.0)
Here you can choose which link-shortening service you wish to use to create the shortlinks for your articles. We currently offer Bitly and Rebrandly link-shortening services for you to choose from.
Authentication
Depending on the link-shortening service you selected above, you will need to create an account with that link-shortening service provider. Once you have an account, you must provide Social Warfare access to it. With Bitly, you’ll click the “Authenticate” button to connect our plugin to their service. With Rebrandly, you must copy and paste your account details into the fields provided.
Sorting Shortlinks by Page Types
Social Warfare will detect each post type that currently exists on your site and provide you with on/off toggles for these. If, for example, you only want shortlinks on your articles, you would then turn them off for pages, portfolios, or any other post types you wish. This allows you greater control over what types of content you want your links shortened for.
If you’re having any issues with your Bitly links, refer to our troubleshooting guide here.
