from Hacker News

Show HN: An open-source alternative to Bitly

by ccbikai on 7/1/24, 8:25 AM with 32 comments

• by cpursley on 7/1/24, 9:28 AM

  Looks great but why dependency and lock in to a specific cloud provider?

• by Brajeshwar on 7/1/24, 9:55 AM

  Cool. Checking it out.

  For those looking for more options, Dub[1] is a matured open-source[2] link shortener with Analytics.

  For not-so-large volumes of links, say for friends-family, and the occasional public links, you can run something off Github Pages[3] with their built-in Jekyll + Redirect-From Plugin[4]. If you do not want to, you do not even need to have the code run locally, just edit on Github. I run one to easily share links for the family and relatives (photos, that document link, along with the Rick-Roll Video).

  Tip: If one wants to run an indie or personal or family/friends shortlink for easy sharing, try to have it on your own domain. This allowed me to moved between tools that powers it.

  1. https://dub.co

  2. https://github.com/dubinc/dub

  3. https://pages.github.com

  4. https://github.com/jekyll/jekyll-redirect-from

• by ohadron on 7/1/24, 9:22 AM

  PSA: Don't shorten URLs if you don't have to because if the shortener ceases working your link is dead.

• by prmoustache on 7/1/24, 9:46 AM

  There is no real good use case for url shorteners. If the platform doesn't support hyperlinks, that platform is simply not up to the task.