Benefits
- Can shorten over 42 billion unique URLs in 6 or less characters (it can do more than 12,000,000 in only 4!)
- Super duper fast—uses very little server resources
- Includes an API so you can create your own short URLs on the fly
- Option to turn clickthru tracking on and off
- Option to limit usage to 1 IP address for personal use and to prevent spamming from others
- Only uses alphanumeric characters so all browsers can interpret the URL
- Secure—several data filters in place to prevent SQL injection hacks
- Option to check if the URL is real (doesn’t respond with a 404) before shortening
- Uses 301 redirects for SEO and analytics yumminess
- Option to store a local cache to prevent database queries on every redirect
- Option to change the characters allowed in a shortened url
├── 404.php
├── about.php
├── assets
│ ├── css
│ │ ├── flagicons.css
│ │ ├── font-awsome.css
│ │ ├── fonts.css
│ │ ├── header2.css
│ │ ├── header.css
│ │ ├── icons.css
│ │ ├── ionicons.css
│ │ ├── normal.css
│ │ └── typeicons.css
│ └── icons
│ └── shortly.png
├── contact.php
├── dashboard
│ ├── includes
│ │ ├── config.php
│ │ ├── header.php
│ │ ├── redirect.php
│ │ └── shorten.php
│ ├── index.php
│ ├── page-profile.html
│ └── stats.php
├── forgot_password.php
├── includes
│ ├── db.php
│ ├── footer.php
│ ├── functions.php
│ ├── header.php
│ └── logout.php
├── index.php
├── optout.php
├── privacy.php
├── README.md
├── s
│ └── js
│ └── unauth.shortenbf9d.js
├── sign_in.php
├── sign_up.php
└── terms.php
Installation
- Make sure your server meets the requirements: a) Optionally you can run this from your current domain or find a short domain b) Apache c) PHP d) MySQL e) Access to run SQL queries for installation
- Download a .zip file of the PHP URL shortener script files
- Upload the contents of the .zip file to your web server
- Update the database info in config.php
- Run the SQL included in shortenedurls.sql. Many people use phpMyAdmin for this, if you can’t do it yourself contact your host.
- Rename rename.htaccess to .htaccess
- If you want to use the caching option, create a directory named cache with permissions 777
Using your personal URL shortener service
- To manually shorten URLs open in your web browser the location where you uploaded the files.
- To programmatically shorten URLs with PHP use the following code: $shortenedurl = file_get_contents('http://yourdomain.com/shorten.php?longurl=' . urlencode('http://' . $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] . '/' . $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']));