After upgrading to WordPress 4.4, you might have noticed that the Get Shortlink button has been removed from the WordPress editor.
The Get Shortlink button along with the View Post button has been removed in an effort to make WordPress more user-friendly with a clean interface.
The View Post button was a redundant functionality, and now you can just click on the Permalink to view the post.
The Get Shortlink button, however, was useful in few cases and some users might want to restore it back.
I use custom shortlink here at WPism and the feature was useful to generate shortlink after publishing my post.
In addition to their ease of sharing on social media platforms, shortlinks can mainly be useful for tracking and analytics purposes for advanced users.
In a few cases, even for those who use default Shortlink, it can be helpful for SEO reasons where the permalinks remain the same even after changing the post/page titles and URLs.
By no means, I am urging you to put back the Get Shortlink button but if it’s useful to you, here’s how you can restore it.
1. Plugins for Get Shortlink Button
Plugins are the easiest way to add simply the Get Shortlink button. Here’re a few plugins that you might find helpful to bring back that function and add some additional features related to Shortlinks.
1.1 Bring Back the Get Shortlink Button
This simple plugin is just intended to bring back the Get Shortlink button after the changes in WordPress 4.4.
If you are only looking to get the functionality back, go ahead and install the plugin.
There are no additional settings for the plugin and you should see the Get Shortlink button immediately.
1.2 Short URL WordPress Plugin
The Short URL WordPress plugin is useful if you want some additional features along with the Get Shortlink button.
In addition to adding the Get Shortlink button, Short URL will change your default shortlink permalinks.
You can further configure
- Define the length of the shortlinks.
- Add a static word as prefix for the shortlinks.
- Modify the characters in individual shortlinks.
The plugin has more than 4,000 active installs and is one of the popular shortlinks plugins on the WordPress repository.
Worth mentioning is that the plugin also works with multisite installations.
The plugin comes with several settings with a page and menu of its own (see screenshot).
1.3 WP Bitly WordPress Plugin
I use the plugin WP Bitly with my custom shortlink URL configured with Bitly.
I recommend the plugin and Bitly configuration if you have a dedicated custom domain for your shortlinks.
The plugin also brings the Get Shortlink button back to WordPress but please use this only if you are looking for advanced configurations with your shortlinks.
2. Custom Code for Get Shortlink button
For those comfortable adding some custom code, you might want to add few lines of code instead of installing an extra plugin to get this simple function.
Add the following code to your functions.php file. (Please backup your file before adding this code and always use child theme to make any edits.)
As you can see, WordPress hasn’t removed the function and just hidden it. Shortlinks are mostly useful to advanced users, and such advanced users can simply enable it by adding filters.
Further, if you are using custom shortlinks, you might also want to display the custom shortlink within the post itself. I will leave that to another advanced post for Shortlinks.
Keep an eye out for an upcoming detailed guide on how to add custom shortlinks in WordPress.
An aside, did you know that you can use shortlinks for Jetpack share buttons? It might be useful if you are using custom shortlinks.
What do you think of the Get Shortlink button? Is it useful to you and have you restored it back? Let me know in the comments below.
