On PHPMaster.com today, there's a new tutorial walking you through the creation of a URL shortner - a simple tool that can be used to compact URLs into something easier to manage (and more friendly with services like Twitter).

Most of us are familiar with seeing URLs like bit.ly or t.co on our Twitter or Facebook feeds. These are examples of shortened URLs, which are a short alias or pointer to a longer page link. [...] In this article you’ll learn how to create a fully functional URL shortener for your website that will work whether you use a front controller/framework or not. If you use a front controller, I’ll discuss you how to easily integrate this URL shortener without having to dig into the controller’s programming.

They help you create a simple database to hold the link relationships, the PHP code to create the randomized hash that represents the link and the code to shorten it. There's also the PHP code to take it the other way and decode the shortened version into the full URL. You can find the full code (ready for checkout) over on the PHPMaster.com Github account.