Another update for tonight: the My Cligs page is now a little different.

The update is actually 2 changes:

• The bug fix: Previously, when you created your first ever clig, it would not show up in your My Cligs page unless it got traffic. Actually, no cligs are shown unless they got traffic. Needless to say, that’s very very wrong and stupid behavior. It’s now fixed.
• The re-organization: Previously, Cligs put the clig count ("X cligs in your account.") and the traffic summary ("The last 100 cligs to get traffic got a total of Y hits.") together. This is not ideal as they are two different types of data and so they’re not split more properly into their respective sections.

These are just the start of a series of tweaks to make the My Cligs page more useful. More coming in the next few days.

If you have suggestions, or if you do/don’t like these changes, let me know.

Part of the new design push, and because Cligs is now much bigger than it was when it launched, the home page just got a new design.

The key change is a new tabbed interface that helps you navigate to the key features of Cligs. Another function of the tabbed interface is to help you remember all the cool features has for you and how they help you understand your traffic more deeply.

As always, feedback welcome. These changes are being driven based on your feedback and it’s always appreciated. Thanks!

I just wrote on the Cligs API mailing list about JSON output support in the V2 of the API under development.

This is a very geeky request so it didn’t get too many votes on We Want, but developers have been asking for it over email and IM.

The key message of this blog post is this: if you’re a developer, you can join the fun and shape the development of the Cligs API by joining the list. What are you waiting for?

As you may know, Cligs is mobile phone friendly - it automtically detects mobile phones and serves a trimmed down version of the Cligs interface.

But wouldn’t be great to use the Cligs bookmarklet on your iPhone too? Well a Cligs user, Brendan from Malleable Musings, explains how in his blog post Cli.gs and the iPhone.

Very neat! Thanks, Brendan!

If you tried to contact me using this blog’s contact form in the past 24 hours, please do so again. The blog experienced a high level of spam which I deleted. Although I double checked everything before I deleted, there is a small chance that a valid contact request got deleted too.

So if you got in touch in the past 24 hours and haven’t heard back, please get in touch again.

Apologies for the hiccup. I’ll find a better contact form solution as this one is clearly not working properly.

Two new features today, one big, one bigger.

Improved Clig Creation Workflow

When you create a clig while logged in, Cligs shows you a list of things you can do next like edit the clig, tweet it, etc. That list has grown to be a very ugly mess of a list and today it got revamped completely.

The new page is much simpler. It gives you the clig URL plus several embed codes. An embed code is the code you need to to use the clig. The current embed codes are:

• The clig URL itself.
• HTML link code that creates a link using your clig.
• HTML link with title code that creates a link using your clig but when you hover over the link you see the destination URL show up.

I’m happy to add more embed codes if you request them. One option is BBCode which is used on a lot of forums. Before I add more options and use up space, I want to know there is demand for it.

Another part of the page that got revamped are the links to edit, tweet, and duplicate the clig. These are now consistent in size and layout and are big enough to make fast working easy. All in all, the page is much more useful and is actually shorter thus saving you scrolling. If you have a big screen, you’ll see everything you want to see in one go.

The embed codes are also visible in the analtyics pages.

Improved Clig Analytics and Edit Clig Pages

Speaking of which, the analytics and editing pags also got a tweak. They both now sport the new layout for navigation, tweeting, and duplicating the clig. Of course, the navigation is sensible: the edit page links to the analytics page and vice versa.

Another improvement is the clig analytics page which now also shows the embed codes discussed above. This means you can now copy and paste the clig or the related code very quickly.

In Summary

The UI improvements are happening and will continue to do so. As ever, feedback always welcome. Do you like it? Do you hate it? Do you want more features visible to make your workflow faster? Let me know and it’ll happen

With the launch of the Cligs Google Gadget earlier today (see the announcement), the second iteration of the Cligs API is in development. It’s called v2 because, shockingly, that’s what the URL versioning system calls it.

What’s the link between the Gadget and v2? The Gadget uses a new v2 feature of the /cligs/create function, namely to output "nicely"-formatted HTML results instead of just plain text. The HTML forms a neat web page which is what the Gadget displays as its URL shortening result.

The next few updates are to add more features to /cligs/create, namely XML and JSON output (yippie!).

However, the big feature of v2 will be the data export API. That’s right, you’ll be able to get your cligs’ traffic data and mash them up and analyze them as you wish. You’ll no longer be constrained to the analytics Cligs does by default.

As ever, any feedback, guidance, wish-lists, and requests are most welcome. You can comment here or email me, or best, join the API developers mailing list.

Today brings you a shiny new toy and a list of toys

Cligs Google Gadget

First the toy: it’s the Cligs Google Gadget which you can add to iGoogle and to Gmail. That’s right, you can now create short URLs without leaving your Google home page or your email. Imagine you’re writing an email with long URLs: you can shorten them without changing windows or tabs.

Not only that, you can add the Cligs Gadget to any web page. This is useful if you have a custom home page and you’d like Cligs with you there.

Not only that, the Cligs Gadget supports the full API: you can specify an API key so that the cligs you create with it are associated with your account.

Full details at: Cligs Google Gadget.

New Tools Page

Over the past few weeks, a lot of awesome tools have been released that use Cligs or work with Cligs. The new Cligs Tools page is a gallery of these tools with links to where you can get them or where you can get more information. This page will constantly be updated as more tools are launched that use Cligs.

Of course, if you know of any tool that’s not on the page let me know and I’ll add it.

The link again: cli.gs/tools.

Tweaked Navigation

You’ll also notice slightly tweaked navigation at the top and also a new navigation menu in the left hand side bar. Nothing major here, but more helpful.

This is an ever-present problem: what happens when punctuation is used right next to a clig’s URL? Previously, I talked about a Cligs-specific workaround and gave the following example:

"…hey check this out http://cli.gs/abc123"

"..hey my site (http://cli.gs/abc123) is cool…"

The problem is that some programs parse URLs in such a way that requests the wrong clig URL; for the first example above, the clig requested is "abc123" but in the second example, it’s "abc123)". Here are some more examples of problematic URL situations, with how the URL is parsed in an odd way to cause a problem:

"…hey check out this site, http://cli.gs/abc123, which talks about this problem"

"..the default format is described at http://cli.gs/abc123; for example, it… "

"..this is cool http://cli.gs/abc123… LOL! "

".. Finally, please visit my site at http://cli.gs/abc123. Thank you."

As a human being, you know where the URL starts and ends, but as a program, there are lots of these situations that are just plain confusing.

This is a problem that’s very common on Twitter and elsewhere. The previous fix was very simple because Cligs did not have the ability to create vanity URLs like http://cli.gs/my-brand-name. When the vanity URLs feature was introduced, the fix stopped working in some cases, which meant that Cligs returned a 404 not found error instead of forwarding.

I’ve been tracking this issue for a while now and I’ve implemented a general fix earlier today. It works a lot like the previous fix, but it works across a lot more test cases - actually, it work on all the test cases I’ve seen. This means that now Cligs forwards correctly even if the requested clig isn’t quite right.

As ever please tell me if Cligs fails to forward when it clearly should and I’ll update this workaround.

As you may know, Cligs has a strong presence on Twitter (if you’re on Twitter and didn’t know that, then please follow @cligs) and as of just now, I’ve flicked the switch on the brand new Cligs identi.ca account, also called @cligs.

This account will function just like on Twitter: meeting the Cligs community and offering tech support. So please subscribe to it and say hi

Again, it’s at @cligs. See you there!