Privacytools.io: 🆕 Software Suggestion | URL Shorteners

[subsign]

Basic Information

Category: URL Shorteners

Description

Needed a URL shortener, first place I went to find one was privacytools.io.

I don't know what the community consensus is but I really don't want to use bitly or
tinyurl. Any suggestions to this end might perhaps make for a new category?

[Mikaela]

I mostly use jekyll-redirect plugin with GitHub pages and have many files like this:

---
redirect_to: https://stackoverflow.com/q/413807
permalink: /r/1024.html
sitemap: false
---

I know that there are actual FOSS URL shorteners, but I don't remember any of their names.

[beerisgood]

Why any shorteners at all?

[subsign]

Why any shorteners at all?

In my particular case as an example, I often link articles to a groups I'm in on whatever mobile chat app I'm using. Sadly, not all links are create equally and posting a massive link to an already cluttered discussion on a tiny screen is just messy.

This use case is unique to my situation and of course doesn't really apply to why this category should exist on privacytools.io. To answer that question: I thought that since I came here looking for a URL shortener, perhaps others have to.

[Mikaela]

I know that there are actual FOSS URL shorteners, but I don't remember any of their names.

I found these that have the latest commit within two years.

• https://github.com/YOURLS/YOURLS
• https://github.com/alanhogan/lessnmore
• https://github.com/cydrobolt/polr
  
  
  
  • https://demo.polr.me/
  
  
• https://github.com/thedevs-network/kutt
  
  
  
  • https://kutt.it/
  
  
• https://github.com/amitt001/pygmy
  
  
  
  • https://pygy.co/
  
  

[subsign]

I know that there are actual FOSS URL shorteners, but I don't remember any of their names.

I found these that have the latest commit within two years.

* https://github.com/YOURLS/YOURLS

* https://github.com/alanhogan/lessnmore

* https://github.com/cydrobolt/polr

  * https://demo.polr.me/

* https://github.com/thedevs-network/kutt

  * https://kutt.it/

* https://github.com/amitt001/pygmy

  * https://pygy.co/

Thanks for taking the time and searching. I'm looking through them as speak.

Edit: These projects look healthy and mature for the most part. I'm sure a more detailed analysis is needed before making it onto privacytools.io but it certainly is a starting point.

Quick comparison:

Yourls: https://yourls.org/

_Docker_: https://hub.docker.com/_/yourls
_Documention_: https://github.com/YOURLS/YOURLS/wiki
_Password/timelimit_:
https://github.com/YOURLS/YOURLS/wiki/PasswordlessAPI

• Free and open-source software.
• Private (your links only) or Public (everybody can create short links, fine for an intranet)
• Sequential or custom URL keywords
• Handy bookmarklets to easily shorten and share links
• Awesome stats: historical click reports, referrers tracking, visitors geo-location
• Neat Ajaxed interface
• Terrific Plugin architecture to easily implement new features
• Cool developer API
• Full jsonp support
• Friendly installer
• Sample files to create your own public interface and more

Polr: https://polrproject.org/

_Documentation_: https://docs.polrproject.org/en/latest/
_Password_: Can't find 'password' in docs' search but requests made in project's issues does show passwords/time limits as requested features
https://github.com/cydrobolt/polr/issues?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=is%3Aissue+password
_Safari_: https://github.com/cleverdevil/Polr.safariextension

kutt: https://kutt.it/

_Chrome/Firefox_: https://github.com/thedevs-network/kutt#browser-extensions
_Docker_: https://github.com/thedevs-network/kutt/tree/develop/docker-examples

• Free and open source.
• Custom domain support.
• Custom URLs for shortened links
• Setting password for links.
• Private statistics for shortened URLs.
• View and manage your links.
• RESTful API.

pygmy: https://pygy.co

_Documentation in readme.md_: https://github.com/amitt001/pygmy
_Docker_: https://hub.docker.com/r/amit19/pygmy

• URL shortener
• Customized short URL's(ex: pygy.co/pygmy)
• Support to create auto expiry URL after some time.
• Secret key protected URL's
• User Login/Sign up to track shortened URL's and link stats
• User dashboard
• Link Analytics(add + to the tiny URL to get link stats)

[BurungHantu1605]

@subsign I was thinking to start a URL shortener as a privacytools.io service. Would you use it? I personally like https://demo.polr.me/

Only issue is, our URL is not exactly short. But it would still add more privacy to it, since it will remove the referrer from analytic tools.

"short.privacytools.io" could be a possible subdomain for this.

[subsign]

@BurungHantu1605 I would certainly make use of it. The plus side of using short.privacytools.io is that the root domain and thus awareness gets spread around

short.privacytools.io/abcde is much better than https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/1523/can-a-us-citizen-be-required-to-provide-the-authentication-key-for-encrypted-dat.

Since the three services on privacytools.io do have alternatives listed in their respective categories and can be self hosted, I guess a discussion should be had on wether url shortener alternatives be added and do those projects meet the privacy standards of the site?

[Mikaela]

"short.privacytools.io" could be a possible subdomain for this.

Could it be just one letter such as s.privacytools.io or t.privacytools.io or even tiny.privacytools.io (as everyone probably knows tinyurl)? Or r.privacytools.io for redirect?

short.privacytools.io/abcde is much better than https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/1523/can-a-us-citizen-be-required-to-provide-the-authentication-key-for-encrypted-dat.

How about https://law.stackexchange.com/q/1523 (click the share button)? :smile: (I do understand what you mean though,even if I don't have any better example at hand right now.)

[subsign]

How about https://law.stackexchange.com/q/1523 (click the share button)? 😄 (I do understand what you mean though,even if I don't have any better example at hand right now.)

Haha, I thought someone was going to mention that. I just scanned privacytools.io looking for a long link 😛

I'll throw url.privacytools.io into the list of suggestions as well.

On a side note, I searched briefly for similar/shorter domain names and thought to contribute a donation for buying one. Thinking about it more however, using privacytools.io is indeed better for a number of different reasons.

[jonaharagon]

I wanted to get a shorter domain but it looks like we're going with link.privacytools.io. Whatever! Haha. We're also going with YOURLS (probably) so we'll have a page up in a few days (it has to be actually made and designed ourselves...).

We're also planning a Javascript tool that site owners can add to their site that'll change all outgoing links like http://example.com to something like https://link.privacytools.io/@http://example.com which will be super cool since it'll strip referrer headers from all those links 😄

---

As far as third party URL shorteners go, I don't really think there are any that would meet the requirements to be recommended by PTIO. Does anyone have any other suggestions? We'll probably just only list our own once it's live, but because it's the only one we can trust, not because we're biased or anything. So if anyone knows of good alternatives speak up and we can include them as well!

[Mikaela]

@JonahAragon Was the plan on link.privacytools.io cancelled/forgotten or did something happen?

I was reminded by a /r/privacytoolsIO thread on privacy oriented bit.ly alternatives