No, that’s not some weird geek code AB-in.UK is the new Author Buzz short URL service. But it is so much more than a URL shortener.

At present, we are closed beta testing URL shortening. That’s because there are a fair few jagged edges that we need to work through. For now, at least, shortened URLs will mostly be used for the main Author Buzz site.

For example:

• https://ab-in.uk/abuzz
• https://ab-in.uk/ablog
• https://ab-in.uk/helpme

When it is ready, you will get a short AB-in.UK link for each of your posts and pages to make social media sharing easier. Our plan is to fully automate this process leaving you free to just use and enjoy.

Image library

Our bloggers have, over the years built up quite a collection of public domain and creative commons images. AB-in.UK will be a repository for these images.

Furthermore, Author Buzz bloggers are encouraged to hotlink the images. This may give you a slight speed boost as your browser can open additional connections to our assistant site while continuing to download the page from your blog.

The only restriction is that if you use a Creative Commons image, you need to give proper credit. How you can do that is explained on Creative Commons galleries and highlights. Galleries are collections of pictures grouped by author or theme while highlights are posts with the images at medium, small, and thumbnail for your use depending on need.

Other resources

Any other resources that we can share with you will also be added to AB-in.UK. For now, it is just a collection of useful stock images but over time, it should grow into a useful tool for Author Buzz Bloggers.

Aggressive caching

As most of what is stored on AB-in.UK is static (unchanging) we have been able to employ far more aggressive caching than we would on Author Buzz UK and your blogs. This should mean slightly faster loading times. Which is why we can allow you to hotlink the images rather than hosting them yourself.