Pretty much the simplest URL shortening service possible. It's simple, fast, opinionated, keeps track of click-thru stats, and does everything I need. It's all self-contained in a single PHP script (and .htaccess file). No dependencies, no frameworks to install, etc. Just upload the file to your web server and you're done. Maybe you'll find it useful, too.
To create a new short link, just append the full URL you want to shorten to the end of the domain name you installed this project onto. For example, if your shortening service was hosted at https://example.com and you want to shorten the URL https://some-website.com, go to https://example.com/http://somewebsite.com. If all goes well, a plain-text shortened URL will be displayed. Visiting that shortened URL will redirect you to the original URL.
Possibly of interest to app developers like myself: The shortening service also supports URLs of any scheme - not just HTTP and HTTPS. This means you can shorten URLs like app://whatever, where app:// is the URL scheme belonging to your mobile/desktop software. This is useful for deep-linking customers directly into your app.
iOS Users: If you have Apple's Shortcuts.app installed on your device, you can click this link to import a ready-made shortcut that will let you automatically shorten the URL on your iOS clipboard and replace it with the generated short link.
All visits to your shortened links are tracked. No personally identifiable user information is logged, however. You can view a summary of your recent link activity by going to /stats/ on the domain hosting your link shortener.
You can click the "View Stats" link to view more detailed statistics about a specific short link.
If you don't want to leave your shortening service wide-open for anyone to create a new link, you can optionally set a password by assigning a value to the $pw_create variable at the top of index.php. You will then need to pass in that password as part of the URL when creating a new link like so:
Create link with no password set: http://example.com/http://domain.com
Create link with password set: http://example.com/your-password/http://domain.com
Your stats pages can also be password protected. Just set the $pw_stats variable at the top of the index.php file.
Viewing stats with no password set: http://example.com/stats
Viewing stats with password set: http://example.com/stats/your-password
This project aims to be as simple-to-use as possible by making all commands and interactions go through a simple URL-based API which returns plain-text or HTML. However, if you're looking to run a script against the shortening service, you can do so. Just pass along Accept: application/json in your HTTP headers and the service will return all of its output as JSON data - including the stats pages.
Bug fixes, new features, and improvements are welcome from anyone. Feel free to open an issue or submit a pull request.
I consider the current state of the project to be feature-complete for my needs and am not looking to add additional features with heavy dependencies or that complicate the simple install process. That said, I'm more than happy to look at any new features or changes you think would make the project better. Feel free to get in touch.