On Fri, 02 Feb 2018 20:56:46 +0000, Andy Burns wrote:

Johnny B Good wrote:

How can I recognise the junk parts of a url like that? I can see that I
need to keep the "https://www.ebay.co.uk" bit

for eBay you can lose the www. as well if you like

and also the need to include the "263383424663" unique item code but
how did you translate the
"/itm/HP5100i-Inverter-Generator-Petrol-Generator-with-Battery-Key-
Starter-generator/" into "/genny/"?

anything between /itm/ and /theitemnumber is pure search engine
fodder, you can chop it all out for the absolute shortest

https://ebay.co.uk/itm/263383424663

or replace it with anything you like

https://ebay.co.uk/itm/anything-you-like/263383424663

The same sort of tricks work for toolstation and screwfix, and many but
not all newspaper sites ...

I keep meaning to put up a website that will strip a URL to the bones,
but leave it pointing to the original site, as an alternative to using a
redirection shortening site like tinyurl.

Thank you very much for that tip, Andy. That's going to save having to
apologise for overly long url strings in the future (at least as far as
ebay page references are concerned).

--
Johnny B Good